Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The Associated Press - Wednesday, September 1, 1999
Russ Bynum - Associated Press Writer
The more confidence gay men have that the drugs can prolong the lives of AIDS patients and prevent transmission of the disease, the less likely they are to use a condom during anal sex or abstain from other risky behavior, according to a study presented Tuesday at the National HIV Prevention Conference.
The study is among the first to support anecdotal evidence that improvements in AIDS treatments may contribute to increasingly devil-may-care attitudes among those at high risk for the disease.
"There's been this rumor that we've been hearing about increases in unprotected sex," said Sheila Murphy, one of the study's authors and a psychologist at the University of Southern California.
"But this is kind of the first wave of actual data that shows things like the number of sexual partners increasing as a function of this sort of optimism," she said.
Researchers surveyed 410 gay men in West Hollywood, Calif., who said they were aware of the drugs called protease inhibitors. When taken in combination with older AIDS drugs, the inhibitors can reduce the level of the virus in the blood so low that it can't be measured.
Of the 346 who did not have HIV, those who were more confident about the ability of drugs to control AIDS said they used condoms 74 percent of the time during anal sex. Those who were less confident said they used condoms 85 percent of the time.
Of the 64 who were HIV-positive, those who were optimistic about the drugs used condoms 66 percent of the time, compared with 85 percent condom use for those who believed the drugs were less effective.
"Clearly many Americans equate improved treatments with a cure, which they are not," said Dr. Ronald Valdiserri, deputy director of the center for HIV prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Scientists at the conference said the study was too limited to draw broad conclusions about how advancements in AIDS treatment may fuel risky behavior.
Still, they acknowledge that the drug combinations have dramatically changed the way people perceive AIDS. The disease used to mean rapid sickness and certain death, but now people are surviving in relatively good health for longer periods.
"There's sort of a complacency that's developed in the gay community," said CDC researcher Rich Wolitski.
Wolitski cited a number of studies that have shown other sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise among gay men -- a sign that their sexual habits also put them at risk of contracting HIV.
Though no studies have been published, some scientists say it's possible that the new AIDS drugs do reduce the odds of transmitting the virus. Previous studies have shown people with higher levels of HIV in their blood are more likely to transmit the virus.
"We would never tell somebody who is HIV positive that by taking drugs they've been rendered noncontagious," said Dr. Myron Cohen, chief of the infectious diseases division of the University of North Carolina.
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