HIV/Age of First Sexual Encounter

Abstract

We congratulate Hein et al1 on their study comparing teenagers who are HIV-infected with those who are not. Although this study was quite detailed in its investigation of infection risk factors, we would like to know whether they considered two other potentially important risk factors in their investigation. The first is the age of the sexual partner. There is reason to believe that teenagers who have older sexual partners are at substantially greater risk of HIV infection than teenagers who have age-equivalent partners.