Sex And Alcohol Not Good For HIV Prevention, Study Says

Research unveiled this week concludes that drinking and sex don't mix -- at least not if you want to prevent HIV.

The study headed for the January issue of the journal Addiction says that you for every .1 increase in blood-alcohol level you see you have a 5 percent greater chance of having unprotected sex.

And the research didn't even include ...

... Charlie Sheen.

The paper, titled "Alcohol consumption and the intention to engage in unprotected sex," explains why otherwise intelligent people make stupid decisions.

The study's principal investigator, J. Rehm, says:

This result also helps explain why people at risk often show this behaviour despite better knowledge: alcohol is influencing their decision processes.

You don't say.

The research is summarized by Addiction:

The study ... summarizes the results of 12 experiments that tested this cause-and-effect relationship in a systematic way. After pooling the results, the researchers found that alcohol consumption affects decision-making, and that this impact rises with the amount of alcohol consumed. The more alcohol that participants consumed, the higher their willingness to engage in unsafe sex.

In these experiments, study participants were randomly allocated to one of two groups in which they either consumed alcohol or did not. Then their intention to engage in unsafe sex was measured. An increase in blood alcohol level of 0.1 mg/mL resulted in an increase of 5.0% (95% CI: 2.8% - 7.1%) in the indicated likelihood of engaging in unprotected sex.

Researchers did not, apparently, measure the double coyote rate of the drinkers, but we can assume the number of arms chewed off would be high as well.

But seriously, you have bigger things to worry about than the quality of your beer-goggle one-nighters now.

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]