MSM, 18 years and above, were enrolled into this study. Participants underwent clinical and microbiological screening for STIs. Urine, oro-pharyngeal and anal swab specimens were collected for STI analysis, and blood for HIV and syphilis screening.
A psychosocial and sexual questionnaire was completed. Their median number of sex partners within the last year was 5 IQR 2β The anus was most commonly affected, followed by the oro-pharynx and then urethra. Asymptomatic infection was associated with transgender identity OR 4. Asymptomatic STI was common and would not have been detected using a syndromic management approach. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: Due to ethical restrictions related to protecting patient confidentiality, data cannot be made publicly available. All relevant data is available upon request to Dr. Kevin Rebe rebe anovahealth. AIDA www. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Anatomical sites of sexual infection in MSM may differ from those in men who have sex exclusively with women, and include oro-pharyngeal and anal infections. Only 2 out of 43 participants reported symptoms, i. This clinic has provided services to more than 6, MSM to date. The ITCMH is situated alongside major car, taxi and train commuter routes and attracts MSM clients with a range of sexual identities from a wide geographic catchment area surrounding Cape Town.
Since the clinic attracts clients from such a diverse spectrum of MSM in different geographic areas, and with diverse socio-economic status and cultural backgrounds, it is likely that MSM attending the clinic are broadly representative of urban and peri-urban MSM in and around the City of Cape Town. All MSM clients attending the clinic between January-July were screened for enrolment irrespective of their reason for attendance.
