If I got those, I could easily just get them cleared.’”īy lowering HIV risk and offering a more acceptable form of HIV prevention than condoms, PrEP helped participants lessen feelings of vulnerability, fear, and shame associated with pre-existing sexual behaviours. “There are times when I think to myself, ‘Well, even though I’m on PrEP, maybe I shouldn’t have unprotected sex because I might catch something else.’ But there’s another part of me that says, ‘Well, those aren’t so terminal. Some men described selectively using condoms based on their perceptions of partners, while other men saw being exposed to other sexually transmitted infections as an acceptable risk. While most men felt that PrEP alone provided strong protection against HIV, they also recognised that unlike condoms, PrEP does not offer protection against other sexually transmitted infections. It attempts to explore how people make sense of their experience, analysing the thoughts and emotions that interviewees ascribe to particular situations.
Rather than attempting to produce findings that are generalisable, this approach focuses on the particular experience of small samples of people in similar circumstances. The researchers used a qualitative research method known as interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Half had been using PrEP for three months or less at the time of the interview (only two had used PrEP for more than a year). Most participants were in their thirties or forties, while the youngest was 26 and the oldest 66. Most men were white one was black and one was Latino. Nonethless, PrEP and U=U do not protect against other STIs. However, it is now recognised that PrEP and U=U are effective HIV prevention tools, without condoms being required. Having sex without condoms, which used to be called ‘unprotected’ or ‘unsafe’ sex. Participants were obtaining PrEP from a range of public and private healthcare providers, in a context of the early stages of PrEP implementation in a state which had lowered financial and administrative barriers to using PrEP. In 2014, the researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 14 PrEP users in Seattle, Washington.
Clinicians and practitioners wishing to promote gay men’s sexual health should consider the full range of impacts that PrEP may have, the authors suggest.
“Sexual health is a state of physical, mental and social well-being in relation to sexuality,” according to the World Health Organization. It's important to note that ‘sexual health’ is not defined simply by the absence of disease. Both positive and negative impacts are likely to be key to PrEP’s acceptability, demand and patterns of use. However, it also exposed users to PrEP stigma. “By lowering HIV risk and offering an alternative form of protection for MSM with low or inconsistent condom use, PrEP helped participants assuage feelings of anxiety and shame surrounding their sexuality, and facilitated greater sexual satisfaction, intimacy, and self-efficacy,” Shane Collins and colleagues say. Men who have sex with men (MSM) in Seattle who had recently begun to take pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) described profound impacts on their sexual health and wellbeing that go beyond PrEP’s primary function of preventing HIV infection, according to a qualitative study recently published in the International Journal of Sexual Health.