Amphetamine Use and Sexual Risk Among Men Who Have Sex With Men: Results From the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance Study—New York City

Abstract

A 2004-2005 survey among 503 men who have sex with men who attend public venues in New York City was used to examine the relationship of amphetamine use with sexual risk behaviors. Among the men recruited, 51.1% were under 30 years of age, 27.4% were Latino, and 23.3% were African American. Most identified as either gay (78.9%) or bisexual (18.1%). A standardized questionnaire collected data on demographics, sexual risk behaviors, drug and alcohol use, history of HIV testing, and occurrences of sexually transmitted infections. Amphetamine use in the past year was reported by 13.8%. Of those, 71.0% used amphetamines with sex. Amphetamine use was associated with unprotected receptive anal intercourse with non-main partners. In event-specific analysis, amphetamine use was higher with unprotected encounters compared with protected encounters. This study confirms the association between amphetamine use and sexual risk furthers our understanding of risky circumstances and lays the groundwork for the design of interventions.

Sexual Partnering and HIV Risk among Black Men Who Have Sex with Men: New York City

“…Participants were recruited using a multistage venue identification and sampling framework as previously described. 10 Men were recruited from public venues, including bars, dance clubs, street locations, sex establishments, cafes and restaurants, gay pride and other events, and retail businesses. The methods of the NHBS study have been described in greater detail elsewhere.…”

A Review of the Literature on Event-Level Substance Use and Sexual Risk Behavior Among Men Who Have Sex with Men

“…Although most of the studies defined sexual risk behavior as sex without a condom, specification of the measure was highly variable. Some of the studies analyzed by partner type (i.e., primary or casual partner) or only analyzed a specific partner type [25,32,54], including sexual behavior with a casual partner [10,28,33,39]. Another difference across studies was subanalysis by insertive or receptive anal sex [26,29,38,54], HIV-discordance or concordance between the respondent and his partner [29,37,40,41,52,55,56], and single vs. multiple partners during the sexual event [31].…”

“…1). Methamphetamine use before sex was evaluated in eight [27,29,31,32,38,40,41,52] and binge drinking was assessed in six [26,30,34,39,41,55] of the 23 studies. Methamphetamine use was particularly associated with unprotected receptive anal sex [29,38].…”

“…Drumright and colleagues conducted a systematic review of substances limited to specific ''club drugs'' [23]. Since that 2006 review, a considerable number of event-level studies [10,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] have been published on a full range of MSM substance use. Another systematic review [24] focused on MSM over 50 years of age, and only two event-level studies were included.…”

Nested Event-Level Case–Control Study of Drug Use and Sexual Outcomes in Multipartner Encounters Reported by Men Who Have Sex with Men

“…at least five drinks before sex) or crystal methamphetamine. While several event-level case-crossover studies have demonstrated statistically significant associations between specific drug use and sexual risk behaviour [2][3][4][5], others have demonstrated non-significant results [6,7]. In addition, few event-level studies have specifically examined the context of multipartner sexual encounters, i.e.…”