Objective
The objectives of this study were to assess the prevalence and risk factors for HIV infection in European female sex workers an to get a broad picture of sexual and drug use behaviors in this population as well as of sociological parameters related to sex work in Europe.
A total of 866 prostitutes from a number of European countries were tested for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) antibody. HIV seroprevalence was 5.3% (44 HIV-1 and 2 HIV-2 from Lisbon). It was 31.8% in intravenous drug users (IVDU) and 1.5% in non-IVDUs. Using logistic regression, the following factors were similarly associated with HIV infection in IVDUs and non-IVDUs: lack of condom use and previous ulcerative sexually transmitted disease (STD). In IVDUs, previous hepatitis B and needle sharing were also associated with HIV. In non-IVDUs, low education level, previous transfusion, origin from sub-Saharan Africa and use of petroleum based lubricants were also associated with HIV infection.
HIV prevalence remains relatively low among non-IVDU prostitutes in Europe. While intravenous (IV) drug use remains the most important risk factor for HIV infection, petroleum based lubricants (used by 10% of studied women) appear to be a major risk factor for HIV among non-IVDUs, of whom over 80% always used condoms with clients.
In the developing world, the role of sex workers as a core-group for the transmission of the Human Immunodeficiency Viruses (HIV) and other sexually transmitted diseases (STD's) has been well defined. Indeed, HIV prevalence rates have been shown to be very high (20% to 90%) in female sex workers of many developing countries and to have increased rapidly over the last decade.
In industrialized countries, the role of this population in the transmission of HIV is far from clear. On one hand, the few HIV seroprevalence studies performed in female sex workers of Europe and North America have shown that this infection is very frequent in intra-venous drug users (IVDUs), with prevalence rates in the range of 20% to 50%, but relatively rare in non-IVDUs sex workers (generally less than 3%). These observations suggest that transmission to prostitutes in these areas occurs mainly through intra-venous drug use, a typical risk factor in pattern I countries. On the other hand, the high rates of HIV found in IVDU prostitutes might lead to heterosexual transmission to their clients. However, there are no obvious signs that such transmission has occurred widely in European or North American countries, possibly because systematic condom use with clients is a common practice among female sex workers of these areas, as suggested by a few studies of limited scale.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology mechanical engineering tribology lubrication
- natural sciences biological sciences microbiology virology
- engineering and technology environmental engineering energy and fuels fossil energy petroleum
- medical and health sciences health sciences infectious diseases RNA viruses HIV
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2000 Antwerp
Belgium
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