A hybrid model for HIV transmission among men who have sex with men

AIDS has spread throughout the world for decades. Men who have sex with men (MSM) is the harder-hit sector of sexually transmitted diseases due to their physiological characteristics. However, because homosexuals suffer discrimination and exclusion in many aspects, the relevant data about the spread of HIV in this group are scarce. Therefore, building a network model to study and analyze this problem can provide valuable reference for the prevention of HIV. Complex network can establish fixed edges between vertices, and ignores the spatial characteristics of the network. These two aspects are exactly what cellular automata are good at, but cellular automata are rarely used in the problem of HIV propagation among MSM populations. Therefore, we combined the advantages of these two methods, and got a new hybrid model. It may provide us with some theoretical factors that affect the spread of HIV and provide guidance for the actual prevention work. (C) 2020 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.