JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Personalized risk assessments can help medical providers determine targeted populations for counseling and risk reduction interventions.

Objective:

The objective of this study was to develope a social media platform-based HIV risk prediction tool for men who have sex with men (MSM) in China based on an independent MSM cohort in order to allow medical providers determine target populations for counseling and risk reduction treatments.

Methods:

A prospective cohort of MSM from Shenyang, China followed from 2009 to 2016 was used to develop and validate the prediction model. The eligible MSM were randomly assigned into the training and validation dataset and Cox proportional hazards regression modeling was conducted using predictors for HIV seroconversion selected by the training dataset. Discrimination and calibration were performed, and the related nomogram and social media platform based-HIV risk assessment tool were constructed.

Results:

The characteristics of the sample between the training dataset and the validation dataset were similar. The risk prediction model identified the following predictors for HIV seroconversion: the main venue used to find male sexual partners; had condomless receptive/ insertive anal intercourse in the past 3 months (P3M); and used rush poppers in the P3M. The bootstrap C-index was 0.75 in the training dataset, and 0.60 in the validation dataset. Nomogram and WeChat-based HIV incidence risk assessment tools for MSM were developed.

Conclusions:

We developed and validated an HIV infection risk prediction model, and constructed a nomogram and a social media platform-based HIV risk assessment tool. The social media platform-based tool can be distributed easily, improve awareness of personal HIV infection risk, and stratify the MSM population based on HIV risk.