Journal article
Incidence and Risk Factors for Early Syphilis among Men Who Have Sex with Men in Australia, 2013-2019: A Retrospective Cohort Study
ET Aung, CK Fairley, JJ Ong, MY Chen, TR Phillips, J Tran, R Samra, EPF Chow
Open Forum Infectious Diseases | Published : 2023
DOI: 10.1093/ofid/ofad017
Abstract
Background: We aimed to examine the incidence of syphilis in men who have sex with men (MSM) and identify subgroups of MSM at a higher risk of syphilis infection. Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of MSM attending a sexual health clinic in Australia, during 2013-2019, who had at least 2 syphilis serological tests during the study period. The incidence of syphilis was expressed as per 100 person-years. A cox regression analysis was conducted to identify risk factors for syphilis. Results: A total of 24 391 individual MSM (75 086 consultations) were included. A total of 1404 new syphilis cases were diagnosed with an incidence of 3.7/100 person-years (95% confidence interval, 3..
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Funding Acknowledgements
We thank Afrizal Afrizal from the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre for his contribution with data extraction for this study. Author contributions. CKF and EPFC designed the study; EPFC and ETA coordinated the study; ETA performed data extraction, reviewed the syphilis cases for accuracy of diagnosis, performed the analysis of the data, and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors were involved in data interpretation, reviewing, and revising the manuscript critically for important intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Financial support. EPFC is supported by an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Emerging Leadership Investigator Grant (GNT1172873). CKF is supported by an Australian NHMRC Leadership Investigator Grant (GNT1172900). JJO is supported by an Australian NHMRC Emerging Leadership Investigator Grant (GNT1193955). ETA is supported by the Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship from Monash University and the Research Entry Scholarship from the Chapter of Sexual Health Medicine, Royal Australasian College of Physicians. JT is supported by the Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship from Monash University.