Variation in health and risk behavior among youth living with HIV

Lifetime and current health practices and risk behaviors were examined amon g 350 youth living with HIV (YLH) aged 14-23 years from four AIDS epicenter s (72.6% male; 26.2% African American, 36.9% Latino). YLH were relatively h ealthy (M CD4 cells = 499), had used substantial health care and were satis fied with the care. YLH's sexual and substance-use histories indicated subs tantial HIV related risk acts: the median number of lifetime partners was 2 5 with only 8% using condoms consistently; 14.9% had injected drugs, and 61 .2% had used hard drugs. Compared with females, males had more lifetime and recent sexual partners and had used more drugs. Youth who were recently se xually active (81.3%) had multiple partners. Most of the sexually active YL H used condoms consistently (81.6%). YLH who were symptomatic or had an AID S diagnosis were likely to have recently had more seropositive sexual partn ers than the asymptomatic youth. Youth disclosed their serostatus to about half of their sexual partners (53.9%). YLH with AIDS used fewer hard drugs than those without an AIDS diagnosis. Health and risk behaviors of the YLH varied significantly based on their disease stage, gender, and ethnicity, s uggesting the need for tailoring interventions for subgroups of YLH.