Heavy Alcohol Use Among Women and Men Living With HIV in Uganda, Russia, and the United States

Objective: We examined whether gender is associated with heavy drinking in three cohorts of people living with HIV (PLWH) in Mbarara, Uganda; St. Petersburg, Russia; and Boston, Massachusetts. Method: We conducted secondary analyses of baseline data collected from three cohorts in the Uganda Russia Boston Alcohol Network for Alcohol Research Collaboration on HIV/AIDS (URBAN ARCH) consortium. We used multiple logistic regression models to evaluate the association between gender and heavy drinking (defined in combination with self-report and phosphatidylethanol [PEth]) within each cohort. Results: In unadjusted logistic regression models, we found no significant association between gender and heavy drinking in Russia or Boston. In Uganda, women were less likely than men to engage in heavy drinking (odds ratio = 0.38, 95% CI [0.26, 0.58], p < .01). These findings were invariant to adjustment for covariates. Conclusions: We did not detect associations between gender and heavy drinking in cohorts of PLWH in Russia or Boston, suggesting that heavy drinking may be as common in women living with HIV as in men living with HIV in these locations. Although these cohorts were enriched with heavy drinking participants, which limits broad extrapolation to PLWH in those settings, nonetheless the findings are concerning given the significant morbidity associated with alcohol use among PLWH and women in particular.