Are Thai MSM willing to take PrEP for HIV prevention? An analysis of attitudes, preferences and acceptance

Ana Wheelock, Andreas B Eisingerich, Jintanat Ananworanich, Gabriela B Gomez, Timothy B Hallett, Mark R Dybul, Peter Piot, Ana Wheelock, Andreas B Eisingerich, Jintanat Ananworanich, Gabriela B Gomez, Timothy B Hallett, Mark R Dybul, Peter Piot

Abstract

Objective: We aimed to understand the attitudes, preferences and acceptance of oral and parenteral PrEP among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Thailand.

Background: Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), the use of antiretrovirals to prevent HIV acquisition, has shown promising results in recent trials. To assess the potential impact of this new HIV prevention method, in addition to efficacy data, we need to understand which psychosocial factors are likely to determine its uptake among members of potential user groups.

Methods and findings: Surveys of willingness to use PrEP products were administered to MSM. Spearman's rank tests were used to uncover associations between questionnaire items. Mann-Whitney tests were performed to ascertain differences between groups. Conjoint analysis was used to examine the attitudes and preferences of MSM towards PrEP attributes. Most participants were willing to consider taking PrEP (39.2% "yes, definitely" and 49.2% "yes, probably") and perceived PrEP as giving them new possibilities in their lives (38.5% "a lot of hope" and 55.8% "some hope"), even after being instructed of potential side effects and costs. HIV testing was considered the most important attribute and a daily pill and longer lasting injection in the arm were the preferred routes of administration.

Conclusions: Despite its multiple challenges, MSM in Thailand would be willing to take PrEP, even if they had to experience inconvenience and expense. If PrEP were to be implemented in Thailand, our findings show that its uptake could be considerable.

Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1. Relative importance of PrEP attributes…
Figure 1. Relative importance of PrEP attributes and marginal utilities* of attributes’ levels.
.3, −.3 is the Point Estimate of Alpha interval. *Conjoint analysis decomposes participants’ ranking of each scenario into the sum of contributions of the different PrEP attributes. Marginal utilities are the part-worth of a specific attribute in participants’ ranking of the scenarios. In other words, marginal utilities signify the extent to which a specific attribute contributes to the ranking of a scenario.

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