1998 Articles

Sexual Risk Behavior Changes Among HIV+ and HIV – Female Injecting Drug Users Over 4 Years

Dolezal, Curtis; Ehrhardt, Anke A.; Meyer-Bahlburg, Heino F.L.; Liu, Xinhua; Exner, Theresa M.; Rabkin, Judith G.; Gorman, Jack M.; Marder, Karen; Stern, Yaakov

This paper examines the sexual risk behavior of female injecting drug users who participated in a 4 year longitudinal study. Both HIV+ and HIV – women showed increases in monogamy, decreases in the frequency of unprotected vaginal/anal sex, and decreases in a risk index score throughout the study. HIV+ women had fewer occasions of unprotected sex than HIV –. However, a substantial proportion of the sample continued to engage in unprotected sex. Among the HIV+ women, depressed mood was significantly related to abstinence and to fewer occasions of unprotected sex, but CD4, medical symptoms, neurological impairment, and memory test performance were not associated with sexual risk behavior.