Estimating Partnership Duration among MSM in Belgium—A Modeling Study

Mathematical modeling is widely used for describing infection transmission and evaluating interventions. The lack of reliable social parameters in the literature has been mentioned by many modeling studies, leading to limitations in the validity and interpretation of the results. Using data from the European MSM Internet survey 2017, we developed a network model to describe sex acts among MSM in Belgium. The model simulates daily sex acts among steady, persistent casual and one-off partners in a population of 10,000 MSM, grouped as low- or high-activity by using three different definitions. Mo... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Achilleas Tsoumanis
Wim Vanden Berghe
Niel Hens
Christophe Van Dijck
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
Reihe/Periodikum: Infectious Disease Reports, Vol 16, Iss 3, Pp 435-447 (2024)
Verlag/Hrsg.: MDPI AG
Schlagwörter: sexually transmitted diseases / men who have sex with men / mathematical model / mathematical modeling / partnership duration / homophily / Other systems of medicine / RZ201-999
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-28971560
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://doi.org/10.3390/idr16030032

Mathematical modeling is widely used for describing infection transmission and evaluating interventions. The lack of reliable social parameters in the literature has been mentioned by many modeling studies, leading to limitations in the validity and interpretation of the results. Using data from the European MSM Internet survey 2017, we developed a network model to describe sex acts among MSM in Belgium. The model simulates daily sex acts among steady, persistent casual and one-off partners in a population of 10,000 MSM, grouped as low- or high-activity by using three different definitions. Model calibration was used to estimate partnership duration and homophily rates to match the distribution of cumulative sex partners over 12 months. We estimated an average duration between 1065 and 1409 days for steady partnerships, 4–6 and 251–299 days for assortative high- and low-activity individuals and 8–13 days for disassortative persistent casual partnerships, respectively, varying across the three definitions. High-quality data on social network and behavioral parameters are scarce in the literature. Our study addresses this lack of information by providing a method to estimate crucial parameters for network specification.