Prevalence and factors associated with HIV testing uptake among sexual active college students in Zhuhai City / 中国学校卫生

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To understand the prevalence of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) testing and associated factors among sexual active college students in Zhuhai City.@*Methods@#From November to December, 2019, an anonymous electronic questionnaire was administered among 12 235 students in six colleges and universities in Zhuhai City by multistage sampling. A total of 1 789 college students ever had sex were selected. Pearsons Chisquare test and nonconditional Logistic regression model were applied to analyze the factors associated with uptake of HIV testing.@*Results@#Among these students ever had sex, 7.55% (135/1 789) had been tested for HIV mainly through hospitals (71.85%). The main reasons for testing were regular testing (50.37%) and intending to know their infection status (23.70%). Multivariable Logistic regression showed that homosexual individuals (OR=4.62, 95%CI=1.07-19.95) and those who had heterosexual commercial sex in the past year (OR=3.77, 95%CI=1.96-7.26) were more likely to test for HIV, while female (OR=0.41, 95%CI=0.24-0.69) were less likely to test for HIV.@*Conclusion@#The proportion of HIV testing was low among sexual active college students in Zhuhai City. Interventions should be tailored including strengthening the HIV testing propaganda education and enhancing students awareness of HIV testing, and the influencing factors such as gender, sexual orientation and commercial sexual behavior should be taken into consideration, so as to improve the HIV testing coverage of this population.