Evaluating behavioral interventions: need for randomized controlled trials.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to T A Peterman.
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OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to develop a method to identify persons at high risk for acquiring new sexually transmitted infections. METHODS: Computerized medical records from sexually transmitted disease clinics in Dade County, Florida, were used to conduct a retrospective cohort study. For all patients who visited in 1987, risk factors were identified for returning to the clinics within a year with a new sexually transmitted infection. Predictor variables were derived from the index visit and any visits in the year prior to the index visit. Logistic regression was used to develop a model that was applied to all patients who attended in 1989. RESULTS: Of 24,439 patients attending in 1987, 18.5% returned within a year with a new infection. Return rates were highest for 15- to 19-year-old Black males (31.8%). The highest odds ratios for returning were a diagnosis or treatment for an infection in the previous year and a diagnosis or treatment for infection at the index visit. The patients predicted to be at highest risk had a 39% return rate. There were as many new infections among the 2893 patients at highest risk as there were among the 13,326 patients at lowest risk. CONCLUSIONS: We developed a model that identifies persons at very high risk for sexually transmitted infection. These persons should be targeted for intensive intervention to reduce their risk.
OBJECTIVES: The effects of posttest counseling on acquisition of sexually transmitted diseases in patients at a large urban sexually transmitted disease clinic were studied. METHODS: Comparisons were made of the percentage of patients who had a positive gonorrhea culture (or any sexually transmitted disease) in the 6 months before and after human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) counseling and testing. RESULTS: For 331 patients counseled about a positive HIV test, the percentage with gonorrhea was 6.3 before and 4.5 after posttest counseling (29% decrease). For 666 patients counseled about a negative test, the percentage with gonorrhea was 2.4 before and 5.0 after posttest counseling (106% increase). With any sexually transmitted disease as the outcome, patients who tested positive for HIV had a 12% decrease and patients who tested negative had a 103% increase after counseling. CONCLUSIONS: HIV counseling and testing was associated with a moderate decrease in sexually transmitted diseases among patients who tested positive for the virus, but risk increased for patients who tested negative. This suggests a need to improve posttest counseling in this clinic and to assess the effects of counseling and testing in other clinics.
This article focuses on efforts to use behavioral interventions to prevent STDs. Presented is a history of attempts to prevent and control STDs through behavior change and a summary of the main theoretic approaches to human behavior that have provided the scientific base for behavioral public health interventions. The authors also review the important behavior intervention studies, most of which have addressed chronic disease prevention. They specify the differences between behaviors that are associated with chronic disease and those that increase risk for STDs, as well as the implications of these differences for behavioral prevention of STDs. Finally, a review of the accumulating empiric evidence in the area of behavioral prevention of STDs is presented and a strategy for the development of methods to help change risk behaviors for STDS (including AIDS) is proposed.
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BACKGROUND: Homosexual and bisexual men with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) differ, and bisexual men play an important role in the sexual transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to women. METHODS: To describe AIDS in these groups, we examined AIDS cases reported nationally through June 1990. RESULTS: Among 65 389 men who reported having had sex with men since 1977, 26% were bisexual. More Black (41%) and Hispanic men (31%) than White men (21%) reported bisexual behavior. Bisexual men were twice as likely to report intravenous drug use (20%) as were homosexual men (9%), regardless of race or ethnicity. Among 3555 women with heterosexually acquired AIDS, 11% reported sexual contact with a bisexual man and no other risk factor, although in some states approximately half reported such contact. In 1989, the AIDS rate due to sex with a bisexual man was three and five times higher among Hispanic and Black women, respectively, than among White women. CONCLUSIONS: Differences between bisexual and homosexual men with AIDS and the relative importance of AIDS in women due to sexual contact with bisexual men should be considered in the development of HIV prevention programs.
The aetiology of KS remains unknown, but recent evidence suggests that the disease is caused by the presence of an infectious agent in an immunosuppressed host. Although there are a variety of clinical presentations, the putative infectious agent is likely to be the same in all cases. The pathophysiology of the lesions, the types of immunosuppression that facilitate disease expression, the response to therapy and the distribution of disease within immunosuppressed populations provide important clues to the nature of the unidentified infectious agent.
In the United States Kaposi's sarcoma is at least 20,000 times more common in persons with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) than in the general population and 300 times more common than in other immunosuppressed groups. Among persons with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) reported to Centers for Disease Control by March 31, 1989, 15% (13,616) had Kaposi's sarcoma. Kaposi's sarcoma was commoner among those who had acquired the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) by sexual contact than parenterally, the percentage with Kaposi's sarcoma ranging from 1% in men with haemophilia to 21% in homosexual or bisexual men. Women were more likely to have Kaposi's sarcoma if their partners were bisexual men rather than intravenous drug users. Kaposi's sarcoma risk was not consistently related to age or race but varied across the United States, being greatest in the areas that were the initial foci of the AIDS epidemic. Thus Kaposi's sarcoma in persons with AIDS may be caused by an as yet unidentified infectious agent, transmitted mainly by sexual contact.
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Data from a national probability sample of drug stores show that condom sales rose from 240 million annually in 1986 to 299 million in 1988. The greatest increase occurred in 1987 after the Surgeon General's report on AIDS was released. Sales of latex condoms with spermicide rose 116 percent. Sales of other types of condoms increased less. These data suggest that Americans are using more condoms and probably more effective condoms in response to AIDS education.
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The risk of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission was studied by interviewing and testing the serum of heterosexual contacts and casual family contacts of adults with transfusion-associated HIV infections. Two (8%) of 25 husbands and ten (18%) of 55 wives who had had sexual contact with infected spouses were seropositive for HIV. Compared with seronegative wives, the seropositive wives were older (median ages, 54 and 62 years; P = .08) and actually reported somewhat fewer sexual contacts with their infected husbands (means, 156 and 82; P greater than .1). There was no difference in the types of sexual contact or methods of contraception of the seropositive and seronegative spouses. There was no evidence of HIV transmission to the 63 other family members. Although most husbands and wives remained uninfected despite repeated sexual contact without protection, some acquired infection after only a few contacts. This is consistent with an as yet unexplained biologic variation in transmissibility or susceptibility.
Traditional statistics, such as the average, currently provide a misleading statistical description of the incubation periods of paediatric transfusion-associated acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (TA-AIDS). Two types of length-biased sampling, left censoring and right censoring, occur in the 37 cases diagnosed before 1986 and reported to the Centers for Disease Control by 15 September 1986. To correct for these problems, we propose a truncated Weibull distribution with use of a maximum likelihood technique. This approach suggests that the mean incubation period of paediatric TA-AIDS cases is 2.4 years with a 90 per cent confidence interval ranging from 1.5 years to 7.2 years. The mode is 1.25 years. These estimates are much shorter than those recently published for adults, therefore the success of TA-AIDS prevention strategies may be seen sooner in the paediatric age group.
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