A descriptive study of British South Asians living with HIV in North East London

ABSTRACT

To our knowledge, no published literature has focused on South Asians living with HIV in the U.K. since 2004. We reviewed the case-notes of all patients self-identifying as South Asian attending two HIV centres in North East London between 1st January and 31st December 2017.

Of 131 patients, 107 were male, median age 43 (range 24–72). Most (73.3%) were born outside the U.K., 55.7% were Muslim. 56.5% identified as heterosexual. However, 5.4% of heterosexual men may have become infected from sex between men. More men who have sex with men (MSM) (59.6%) were diagnosed on routine screening rather than when symptomatic or through partner notification, compared to heterosexual men (30.6%) and women (48.0%). Heterosexual men and women were diagnosed with lower CD4 counts than MSM (257 vs 307 vs 456 cells/µL). . Almost all of the sample were on antiretroviral treatment (97.7%), of whom 94.5% had an undetectable viral load (<200 copies/ml). The cohort was highly co-morbid (60.3%) and 38.9% had a history of poor mental health.

We describe a diverse sample of British South Asians living with HIV We recommend that culturally specific campaigns encouraging routine HIV testing in the British South Asian population should be developed.

KEYWORDS:

• HIV
• ethnicity
• South Asians

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the patients of the Barts Health and Barking Havering and Redbridge NHS Trusts. The authors have no competing interests to declare and did not receive any funding for this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).