Search Here

In this week's PLoS Medicine, Alexander Tsai of Harvard University, Cambridge, USA and colleagues show that in sexually active women in Brazil severe food insecurity with hunger was positively associated with symptoms potentially indicative of sexually transmitted infection and with reduced odds of condom use. The authors say: "Our findings suggest that interventions targeting food insecurity may have beneficial implications for HIV prevention. Individual-level cognitive and/or behavioral interventions targeting HIV risk avoidance or risk reduction behaviors are likely to be less than optimally effective if these structural factors are not also taken into account."

Source: Public Library of Science