Risk of sexually transmitted Zika virus in a cohort of economically disadvantaged urban residents.

Abstract

In order to understand the disease burden of sexually transmitted Zika virus (ZIKV), we prospectively followed a cohort of 359 adult and adolescent residents of an urban community in Salvador, Brazil through the 2015 ZIKV epidemic. Later, in 2017, we used a retrospective survey to associate sexual behavior during the epidemic with ZIKV infection as defined by IgG3-NS1 ELISA. We found that males who engaged in casual sexual encounters during the epidemic were more likely (ORa=6.2; 95%CI 1.2-64.1) to be ZIKV positive, suggesting that specific groups may be at increased risk of sexually transmitted infections.