Factors associated with recent HIV testing among Montréal men who have sex with men (MSM): results from the ARGUS 2005 and 2008 surveys
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: HIV testing is important for several reasons. It allows the person to be aware of their infection and it provides the opportunity for health professionals to educate individuals on safer sex practices. Furthermore, infected individuals can receive in timely fashion antiretroviral medication, which can delay the onset of AIDS-related illnesses. It is therefore important that individuals who are at high risk of becoming infected, such as men who have sex with men (MSM), be regularly tested for the virus. Objectives and methods: The objectives of this thesis were to examine the factors associated with recent HIV testing among Montréal MSM, and to see if these factors changed over time. Data were collected during a cyclical surveillance project called ARGUS at two time points (2005 and 2008). Participants completed a self-administered anonymous questionnaire and provided a blood sample for biological analyses. Analyses for the thesis were limited to MSM living in Montréal, aged 18 years or older and self-reported being either HIV-negative or of unknown status. The outcome of interest was having had at least one HIV test within the previous 6 months. Demographics, sexual behaviours, and knowledge and beliefs regarding HIV were examined for their association with the outcome of interest. Logistic regression analyses, stratified by the year of study, were examined and then pooled to develop a single final model. Results: In total, 1,741 and 1,051 men participated in 2005 and 2008, respectively. Analyses indicate that the percentage of men who were recently tested increased significantly from 2005. In addition, the association between high-risk behaviours, such as engaging in unprotected anal intercourse with a risky sexual partner and HIV testing, which was identified in 2005, was no longer present in 2008. Furthermore, younger MSM who engage in high-risk behaviours, such as having a high number of sexual partners, were no more likely to be screened as compared to younger men who had no sexual partners. Conversely, a positive association for older men remained important. Conclusion: While recent HIV testing by Montréal MSM increased between 2005 and 2008, the profiles of men who recently tested differed between the years. The prevalence of most risk factors remained stable across both cycles, yet some high risk behaviours were no longer associated, or not as strongly associated, with testing in 2008. Changes may have been due to testing campaigns that emerged after the first cycle of ARGUS, which showed that one in four HIV positive men were unaware of their serostatus. This finding led to several initiatives to optimize HIV testing among MSM, where community and public health officials encouraged them to get tested regardless of their risk profile.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".