Social media-based HIV testing finds new cases

Outreach on social media may help encourage men at high risk for HIV infection to get themselves tested, a new study from the UK suggests.

When researchers advertised home sampling kits to gay and bisexual men through social media and apps, nearly 6,000 men returned saliva or blood sampling kits they requested from the online service. Eighty- two of them were newly diagnosed with the human immunodeficiency virus ( HIV) that causes AIDS. Writing in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections, the researchers estimate that about one of every eight gay and bisexual men in the UK is HIV-positive, but about 16 percent of those men aren’t diagnosed.

“The key to HIV prevention and control of the epidemic is to test as early as possible and manage and treat,” said lead author Dr. Emilie Elliot, of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. “The more opportunities there are for that, the more you reduce barriers and the more you’re likely to reduce the weight of undiagnosed HIV.”

She and her colleagues write that community HIV testing programs lack convenience, time and anonymity. Those barriers could be overcome by allowing people to collect their own saliva or blood at home. Offering home sampling to gay and bisexual men through social media and apps is one approach.

The program evaluated in the new study began in November 2011 and is known as Dean Street at Home (DS@H). Men who have sex with men were invited to order a home sampling kit through messages or banners on Gaydar, Facebook, Grindr and Recon.

Over a two-year period, starting in January 2012, more than 17,000 men completed a basic HIV risk assessment that asked about condom use, last HIV test and sexual history. They received feedback on their HIV risk and were offered a home sampling kit to collect saliva or – starting in August 2013 – blood from a finger prick.

More than a third of the men had not previously been tested for HIV and nearly half were at risk for the infection. —