On the occasion, this Wednesday, December 1st, of the World Day against AIDS, Why Doctor offers you a series which summarizes the state of knowledge on this disease. Today, focus on antiretroviral treatment against HIV (TasP), which many are unaware of.
- HIV treatment not only improves the health of people living with HIV, it is also a highly effective strategy to protect against HIV.
- Thus, people living with HIV who are on antiretroviral therapy, who reach and maintain an undetectable viral load beyond six months, do not transmit HIV to their sexual partner(s).
- This mode of protection is called TasP (from the English “Treatment as Prevention”, or “treatment as a prevention tool”).
More than a decade ago, the preventive effect of antiretroviral treatment against HIV, called “TasP”, was scientifically demonstrated: an HIV-positive person on treatment with an undetectable viral load cannot transmit the virus.
Only 60.5% of homosexuals know about TasP
The objective of a new French trial was “to assess the level of knowledge of TasP among men who have sex with men in 2021, to describe their characteristics according to their declared HIV status and the factors associated with this knowledge”, explain the researchers from Public Health France in the preamble.
The data comes from the online survey Rapport au sexe (ERAS). Among the 14,706 respondents included in the analysis, residing in France and having had at least one sexual relationship with a man during their life, only 60.5% know TasP, i.e. 92.4% among HIV-positive people and 58.2% among HIV-negative people or those who do not know they are infected.
The logistic regressions show that a low level of education, a financial situation perceived as difficult, a low level of understanding of health information or even the fact of not defining oneself as homosexual were associated with less knowledge of TasP. Conversely, living in an urban setting, frequenting the gay community, or frequenting HIV care services were positively associated with treatment knowledge.
“The continuation of TasP popularization campaigns is essential”
The differences between HIV status can be explained by the fact that information on TasP was disseminated more quickly to people living with HIV during their medical care, taking into account the individual benefits of the treatments in terms of reduction morbidity and mortality for them from the beginning of the 2010s.
“The continuation of TasP popularization campaigns is essential, whether through associative, community, health channels but also the general public, with the aim of improving knowledge about HIV and reducing HIV-related stigma”, therefore conclude the researchers Annie Velter, Youssoufa Ousseine, Cécile Allaire and Nathalie Lydié.
173,000 French people live with HIV, and 36.3 million people have died from AIDS-related illnesses since the start of the epidemic in 1981. This virus affects the immune defences, i.e. it prevents the body from fighting against diseases .
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