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Battered women are more than three times as likely to contract HIV as women who are not in violent relationships, according to a newly released study of nearly 14,000 women in the United States.

Researchers found that 5.5 percent of women in the study – all 20 years old or older – reported abuse by their partners in 2004 and 2005. The rate of HIV infection for women was 0.17 percent, and it was three times higher among women who reported partner violence than women who did not. Of those who contracted HIV, nearly 12 percent said it was a result of intimate partner violence.

Associate Professor at the University of Manitoba in Canada Jitender Sareen, M.D., the lead researcher, told Health Behavior News Service, “These numbers are solely due to forced sex on women from their infected partners. It is a substantial percentage.”

Authors recommend that women presenting in medical settings with HIV or AIDS be assessed for violence.

Sareen, Jina Pagura, B.Sc., and Bridget Grant, Ph.D. conducted the study using data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Researchers analyzed information from 13,928 women who reported being in a romantic relationship in the last year. Because of the limitations of the study, which did not look at lifetime histories of abuse, researchers say the association between intimate partner violence and HIV may be even stronger.

The study is published in the May/June issue of the General Hospital Psychiatry. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first to examine the relationship between intimate partner violence and HIV in the United States. Similar research has linked intimate partner violence to HIV in Africa and India.