Objectives We examined the associations between specific types and sources of discrimination and mental health outcomes among U.S. racial/ethnic minority men who have sex with men (MSM) and how these associations vary by race/ethnicity. Methods A chain-referral sample of 403 African American, 393 Asian and Pacific Islander (API), and 400 Latino MSM recruited in Los Angeles County, CA completed a standardized questionnaire. Results Past-year experiences of racism within the general community and perceived homophobia among heterosexual friends were positively associated with depression and anxiety. Past-year homophobia experienced within the general community was also positively associated with anxiety. These statistically significant associations did not vary across racial/ethnic groups. The positive association of perceived racism within the gay community with anxiety differed by race/ethnicity, and was statistically significant only for APIs. Perceived homophobia within the family was not associated with either depression or anxiety. Conclusions Higher levels of experiences of discrimination were associated with psychological distress among MSM of color. However, specific types and sources of discrimination were differentially linked to negative mental health outcomes among African American, API, and Latino MSM.

The deleterious effects of racism on a wide range of health outcomes, including HIV risk, is well documented among racial/ethnic minority groups in the United States. However, little is known about how men of color who have sex with men (MSM) cope with stress from racism and whether the coping strategies they employ buffer against the impact of racism on sexual risk for HIV transmission. We examined associations of stress and coping with racism with unprotected anal intercourse (UAI) in a sample of African American (n = 403), Asian/Pacific Islander (n = 393), and Latino (n = 400) MSM recruited in Los Angeles County, CA during 2008–2009. Almost two-thirds (65%) of the sample reported being stressed as a consequence of racism experienced within the gay community. Overall, 51% of the sample reported having UAI in the prior six months. After controlling for race/ethnicity, age, nativity, marital status, sexual orientation, education, HIV serostatus, and lifetime history of incarceration, the multivariate analysis found statistically significant main effects of stress from racism and avoidance coping on UAI; no statistically significant main effects of dismissal, education/confrontation, and social-support seeking were observed. None of the interactions of stress with the four coping measures were statistically significant. Although stress from racism within the gay community increased the likelihood of engaging in UAI among MSM of color, we found little evidence that coping responses to racism buffered stress from racism. Instead, avoidance coping appears to suggest an increase in UAI.

Generalized linear mixed models with random intercepts and slopes provide useful analyses of clustered and longitudinal data and typically require the specification of the distribution of the random effects. Previous work for models with only random intercepts has shown that misspecifying the shape of this distribution may bias estimates of the intercept, but typically leads to little bias in estimates of covariate effects. Very few papers have examined the effects of misspecifying the joint distribution of random intercepts and slopes. However, simulation results in a recent paper suggest that misspecifying the shape of the random slope distribution can yield severely biased estimates of all model parameters. Using analytic results, simulation studies and fits to example data, this paper examines the bias in parameter estimates due to misspecification of the shape of the joint distribution of random intercepts and slopes. Consistent with results for models with only random intercepts, and contrary to the claims of severe bias in a recent paper, we show that misspecification of the joint distribution typically yields little bias in estimates of covariate effects and is restricted to covariates associated with the misspecified random effects distributions. We also show that misspecification of the distribution of random effects has little effect on confidence interval performance. Coverage rates based on the model-based standard errors from fitted likelihoods were generally quite close to nominal.

Background & Aims Prior studies suggest the rate of liver fibrosis progression is slower in African-Americans (AA) than Caucasian-Americans (CA) with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Methods Using a multi-state Markov model, fibrosis progression was evaluated in a well-characterized cohort of 143 AA and 157 CA adults with untreated chronic HCV genotype 1 infection. In subjects with a history of injection drug use, duration of infection was imputed from a fitted risk model rather than assumed to be the reported first year of use. Results The distribution of Ishak fibrosis stages were 0 (8.7%), 1/2 (55.7%), 3/4 (29.3%) and 5/6 (6.3%), and was similar in AA and CA (p= 0.22). After adjusting for biopsy adequacy, AA had a 10% lower rate of fibrosis progression than did CA, but the difference was not statistically significant (hazard ratio = 0.90, 95% confidence intervals = 0.72, 1.12). The overall 20-year estimates of probabilities of progression from stage 0 to stages 1/2, 3/4 and 5/6 were 59.3%, 28.8% and 4.7%. The estimated median time from no fibrosis to cirrhosis was 79 years for the entire cohort, and 74 and 83 years for CA and AA, respectively. In 3-variable models including race and biopsy adequacy, the factors significantly associated with fibrosis progression were age when infected, steatosis, ALT level, and necroinflammatory score. Conclusions The rates of fibrosis progression were slow and did not appear to differ substantially between AA and CA.