OBJECTIVETo investigate the situation of notification and HIV antibody testing of sexual partners of people who lived with HIV, and to analyze the factors which could influence the rate of sexual partner notification of Shanghai.

METHODSHIV-positive people were recruited from Jiading, Jinan and Xuhui District in Shanghai, all of them were diagnosed with HIV from July 1, 1998 to July 30, 2014, and all of them were ≥ 16 years old, ruled out poor compliance, unwillingness to cooperate, mental disorders, deaf and other factors that could not properly answer questions. Face to face questionnaires were used to collect demographics, HIV related knowledge, testing of HIV, status of sexual partners before they have been diagnosed with HIV, notification of sexual partners. These questionnaires were self-designed. The differences of notification situation and the HIV-positive rate among different sexual partners were compared by chi-square tests. The factors which would influence the rate of sexual partner notification were analyzed by logistic regression, and the OR (95% CI) value was calculated.

RESULTSA total of 307 people living with HIV were surveyed, of these 276 (89.9%) were males and 31 (10.1%) were females. The rates of different sexual partner been notified from spouses, homosexual regular partners, heterosexual regular partners, heterosexual no-regular no-commercial partners, homosexual no-regular no-commercial partners to commercial sexual partners were 68.2% (105/154), 44.7% (119/266), 21.4% (22/103), 5.8% (3/52), 5.5% (43/787), and 0.4% (1/235) (χ(2) = 5.22, P < 0.001). Among these been notified sexual partners 277 of them have had HIV antibody tested, 90 persons was HIV-positive, the rate was 32.5%. Confirmed time (OR: 0.37, 95% CI: 0.16-0.86), whether inform staff allowed the HIV-positive people mobilize their sexual partners have HIV-antibody test (OR: 9.63, 95% CI: 3.77-24.55), whether someone else was present during notification (OR: 5.57, 95% CI: 1.96-15.78) and relationship stability (OR: 28.55, 95% CI: 7.93-102.75; OR: 14.13, 95% CI: 4.87-41.02) were associated with HIV-positive people disclosing their infected status to their sexual partners.

CONCLUSIONSThe rate of notification to these partners was low, but the HIV antibody positive rate was high among the sexual partners in the three research districts of Shanghai. Shorter confirmed time, inform staff didn't allow the HIV-positive people mobilize their partners have HIV-antibody test, no other was present during people was told they were HIV-positive, and no fixed sexual relationship, all these could make lower rate of sexual partners to be notified.