Abstract

An Empiric Risk Score to Guide PrEP Targeting Among MSM in Coastal Kenya

Wahome E, Thiong'o AN, Mwashigadi G, Chirro O, Mohamed K, Gichuru E, Mwambi J, Price MA, Graham SM, Sanders EJ
AIDS Behav. 2018;22

Permenent descriptor

Men who have sex with men (MSM), who have heterogeneous HIV-acquisition risks are not specifically targeted in Kenyan pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) guidelines. We used data from an open cohort, which followed 753 initially HIV-negative MSM participants for more than 1378.5 person-years, to develop an empiric risk score for targeting PrEP delivery. Independent predictors of incident HIV-1 infection in this cohort were an age of 18-24 years, having only male sex partners, having receptive anal intercourse, having any unprotected sex, and having group sex. Poisson model coefficients were used to assign a numeric score to each statistically significant predictor. A risk score of >/= 1 corresponded to an HIV-1 incidence of >/= 2.2 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.2-4.1] and identified 81.3% of the cohort participants as being at high risk for HIV-1 acquisition. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.76 (95% CI 0.71-0.80). This empiric risk score may help Kenyan health care providers to assess HIV-1 acquisition risk and encourage PrEP uptake by high-risk MSM.