File photo A syphilis outbreak, improved data collection and trends in sex surveys were papers featuring gay and bisexual men presented at the annual NZ Sexual Health Conference in Rotorua over the weekend. Dr Edward Coughlan from Christchurch Sexual Health Clinic described how they responded to a syphilis outbreak among younger gay and bisexual men that had been linked to hook-ups on mobile dating apps. Partner notification had helped locate, test and treat infected sexual partners, many of whom did not have symptoms. However, direct communication with gay men using some apps had been difficult due to the high cost of advertising. Also, providers often placed restrictions on ad wording, and generally wanted to avoid public health messages featuring STIs being displayed on their sites. Dr Kerry Sexton from ESR reported that improved national surveillance of syphilis cases, including whether cases occurred through homosexual sex, had been critical to identifying the outbreak and mounting a timely response. But she noted that data on same-sex contact were not routinely reported for chlamydia or gonorrhoea cases (or genital warts), meaning that outbreaks among gay and bisexual men would not be able to be detected in a similar way. Adrian Ludlam from Auckland University presented a pilot study of “Respondent Driven Sampling”, a novel approach for recruiting small, invisible, networked populations into research such as GLBTI communities. This was the first time it had been trialled in New Zealand among gay and bisexual men and held some promise for collecting more representative samples, which is notoriously difficult. Ten per cent of participants had undiagnosed rectal chlamydia infection and the study identified several ways the method could be adapted and improved for future research. Dr Peter Saxton from Auckland University summarised trends in ongoing surveys of men in the GAPSS and GOSS studies since 2002. An apparently contradictory finding was that participants were increasingly looking for sexual partners online, but fewer were reporting very high numbers of recent sexual partners. A possible explanation was that online searching enabled more efficient “sexual sorting”, suggested Saxton, meaning that gay and bisexual men could now find compatible sexual partners sooner by screening potential partners prior to sex. During the conference Dr Edward Coughlan became the new Sexual Health Society president and Dr Peter Saxton was voted onto the executive team.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Tuesday, 12th November 2013 - 11:14am