Kyle, the PrEP participant in Sydney, said he had one bout of chlamydia in his first six months on the program and admits his condom usage has gone from “sometimes” to “rarely.”
“To be honest, it’s not a big increase in my experience of STIs — not to say that I was constantly catching things,” he said.
Another difference now is that Kyle is being screened quarterly for infections as per PrEP guidelines, which means any disease will be treated sooner — reducing the risk of him passing it on — than if he stuck with his usual schedule of a checkup every six-to-nine months, he said. The tests also check for a small risk of kidney damage from Truvada and allow doctors to monitor for a decrease in bone density known to occur in some people after taking PrEP for a few years.
‘Queer Warrior’
“No one should be surprised if STI numbers could potentially go up a bit before they go down because you are, for the first time ever, screening people appropriately,” said Demetre Daskalakis, deputy commissioner for disease control with the New York City health department, in a telephone interview.
Based on a health department survey, about 30 percent of men ages 18 to 40 who have sex with men are on PrEP — and the benefits of it outweigh any risks, according to Daskalakis, who calls himself a “queer health warrior” and posed bare-chested in posters on the New York subway for a campaign in June to encourage citizens to find a new doctor if they can’t talk openly about their sex lives. New HIV infections among gay and bisexual men fell 10 percent in 2015, the biggest annual drop in New York City’s history of the epidemic.
Beyond the medical benefit of PrEP, the preventative treatment encourages people to talk more openly and confidently about their sexual health and HIV in particular.
“If anything, I have more conversations about people’s statuses,” said Kyle. “It gives me confidence to say, ‘I am on PrEP. Where are you at?’”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.