Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Apr 29, 2024
Date Accepted: Jul 9, 2024
Chemsex sessions typologies and associated sociodemographic factors in sexual minority men: a latent class analysis from a cultural perspective in a cross-sectional survey
ABSTRACT
Background:
Chemsex magnitude is still not well known and both its cultural component and the lack of homogeneity in chemsex practices is usually overlooked.
Objective:
This study aims to estimate the proportion of sexual minority men (SMM) engaging in chemsex sessions, while understanding its cultural dimension, and to analyze distinct session typologies with potential risk differences and the sociodemographic factors associated to engaging in them
Methods:
5,711 SMM residing throughout Spain participated in an online anonymous survey which assessed chemsex sessions engagement and characteristics, drug use and sociodemographic variables. Sociodemographic factors association with engaging in chemsex sessions was measured with adjusted prevalence ratios (aPR) calculated using multivariate Poisson regression analysis. Chemsex typologies were analyzed using latent class analysis (LCA), as well as sociodemographic factors associated to the different risk classes.
Results:
21.1% of SMM engaged in chemsex sessions during their lifetime. Participating in sessions was significantly associated to being a migrant, not having a comfortable financial situation, openly living their sexuality, residing in bigger municipalities, older age, using steroids and living with HIV (aPRs 1.17 to 2.01). Three typologies of sessions with different risks were identified with LCA, with 23.2% of SMM engaging in sessions taking part in the higher-risk ones, which was associated to younger age, using steroids, living in bigger municipalities, openly living their sexuality and living with HIV compared to SMM engaging in lower-risk sessions (OR 2.75 to 4.99)
Conclusions:
Chemsex is relatively common among SMM in Spain, but is important to differentiate typologies of sessions with varying risks, and the proportion of SMM engaging in high-risk sessions is low. Chemsex is highly associated to sociodemographic factors. Chemsex should be reinforced in public health programs that consider the different forms of sessions with varying risks and magnitudes, paying attention to the cultural dimension inherent to chemsex
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.