The characteristics of the study subjects are shown in Table 1.
HIV-positive subjects were significantly older than HIV-negative
subjects (mean age 36.25 vs. 32.83 years, p = 0.0036). Equally
numbers of HIV-positive subjects are MSM and women (48.1% vs.
51.9%, respectively) whereas in HIV-negative subjects there are
more MSM than women (79% vs. 21%, p < 0.0001). The HIVnegative
subjects had higher educational level (p = 0.0012) and
income (p = 0.0138) than HIV-positive subjects. The characteristics
of HIV-positive participants in relation to their HAART status is also
shown in Table 1. Those who were on HAART had significantly
lower HIV RNA than subjects who were not on HAART (p < 0.0001)
but their CD4 counts were not different. Table 2 shows the
characteristics of the study subjects in relation to their gender.
MSM were generally younger (34.17 vs. 37.04 years, p = 0.003)
and had higher educational level (59.26% vs. 13.76% finished
post-secondary school level, p < 0.0001) than women. Among
HIV-positive participants, HIV-positive MSM were less likely to be
on HAART (65.56% vs. 81.44%, p = 0.014), less likely to have CD4
count 500 cells/ml (23.33% vs. 50.52%, p < 0.0001) and HIV RNA