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A 12- week MCAIS pilot study completes

A Pilot for the Male Circumcision Acceptability and Impact Study (MCAIS), carried out by the PNG Institute of Medical Research has been completed with findings presented last Wednesday during the IMR seminar series.

The Pilot study comes under the Longitudinal Clinical Research component of the MCAIS. Other components include Qualitative Research, Mathematical Modeling and Health Systems Research. The findings of the12-week pilot study were presented by Graduate Scientific Researchers, Pamela Toliman and James Neo, at the Adolf Saweri Auditorium at the IMR, in Goroka.

During the presentation, Ms Toliman, explained that the purpose of the study was to investigate the acceptability, epidemiological impact, co-effectiveness and options for a program implementation of male circumcision and vaginal microbicides in Papua New Guinea.

“The aim of the pilot was to look at the options of conducting a longitudinal clinical research among at-risk men and women attending the clinic,” she said.

“We wanted to determine whether or not it was feasible to conduct or longer-term clinical research among at-risk men and women in this setting.”

The pilot study was conducted at the Tininga (STI and HIV) Clinic in Mt Hagen for 12 weeks between August and December last year. During the pilot, 50 clinic attendees were interviewed and examined.

During recruitment for the study, attendees were examined physically; specimens (blood and urethral/cervical swabs) were collected and short behavioral questionnaires were asked.

Key findings from this study include:

• Low condom use among men and women;
• Dysuria and genital discharge being the most common presenting complaints from both men and women;
• A third of men having a penile dorsal slit;
• High prevalence of Chlamydia, gonorrhoea (21 % respectively) and trichomoniasis (32 %) among women.
• Prevalence of herpes simplex virus 2 was between 30-35 % in men and women.
• Prevalence of syphilis was 9 %.
• Only 24 out of the 50 participants agreed to an HIV test and all tests were negative.

Ms Toliman said that with these findings, it will provide valuable information about the feasibility of running a longitudinal clinical study at Tininga Clinic.

However, Ms Toliman and Mr Neo agreed that clinic space, human resource and retention of study participants over the study period were the biggest challenges that have to be dealt with appropriately before any future studies are embarked on.

The MCAIS is a 4-year research project which is funded by the Australian Development Research Awards. IMR is a collaborator on this study with the School of Population Health, University of Queensland and National Centre in HIV Epidemiological and Clinical Research, University of New South Wales.