BEHAVIORAL CORRELATES OF HTLV-III AND IMMUNE DEFICIENCY

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The proposal will build upon an ongoing longitudinal study of 6,000 subjects who were tested up to three times during their junior high school years (1971-73) and again as young adults (between 1981 and 1986) in order to test theoretical models of the adoption and changes in level of involvement in more or less deviant adaptations to life stresses. By obtaining data from a second adult interview and from blood samples from a portion of these subjects (N=1800) we will test theoretically informed multivariate models of the mutually influential more and less proximate precursors of 1) infection with HTLV-III (indicated by ELISA, immunofluoresence, culture), 2) immune deficiency data (reflected in differentiation marker studies and functional tests), 3) changes in behaviors that are recognized as implicated in infectiion with AIDS virus, and 4) responses to threats to self-conceptions posed by the request to provide blood samples, the expectation of receiving information regarding the test outcome, knowledge of the test results, and symptoms associated with HTLV-III infection, using a range of multivariate analytic strategies. We aim to conduct four sets of analyses guided by previously formulated general theoretical paradigms and comprehensive reviews of the literature. Explanatory factors in the first set of models include parenteral drug use, homosexual patterns such as anal receptive intercourse, sexual promiscuity, as well as the psychosocial factors that increase the opportunity to learn and to become motivated to engage in these patterns. In the second set of models explanatory factors include various patterns of substance abuse, psychosocial stress, nutrition, other indicators of health status, and the biopsychosocial precursors of these factors that facilitate the learning, motivation to engage in, or experience of these patterns. These factors are not of the direct or indirect effects of HTLV-III infection or its precursors upon immunodepressive states. In the third set of models, explanatory factors further include beliefs about the consequences and the subjective evaluative significance of the behaviors that are in fact and/or believed to be implicated in the onset and course of AIDS and the risk status of the person for contracting HTLV-III infection. For the fourth set of models, explanatory factors include characteristic adaptive/coping/defensive patterns, personal and interpersonal resources (both instrumental and socioemotional), the evaluative significance of threatened social roles, and awareness of the potentially threatening AIDS-related stimuli, and the precursors of these factors.