HIV Infection in Thailand: The Use of Condoms-Reply

In Reply.  —Dr VanLandingham is critical of the measure of condom use given in our study of HIV infections in young men in northern Thailand. We used self-reported condom use with last CSW instead of usual condom use in order to improve the recall of the subjects. However, we asked participants several questions about their use of condoms, including frequency of usual condom use with CSWs and other sexual partners. Each of these condom-use variables was examined for its association with HIV-1 prevalence in univariate and multivariate analysis.In univariate analysis, we found either no significant association between reported condom use and HIV-1 prevalence or an increased prevalence associated with more frequent reported condom use with CSWs. For example, among men who reported usually using condoms with CSWs, the HIV prevalence was 18.5%, compared with 13.8% in those reporting some condom use but "less than half the time" and 9.4%