Women who are beaten or dominated by their partner are nearly half as likely to become infected by HIV when compared with women who live in non-violent households, a South African study says.

The research was carried out among 1 366 women who attended health centres in Soweto, Johannesburg, and who agreed to be tested for the Aids virus and be interviewed about their home life.

After being adjusted for factors that could skew the outcome, such as whether the interviewees had engaged in casual sex or prostitution, the figures showed women who were beaten by their husbands or boyfriends were 48% likelier to become infected by HIV than their counterparts.

And those who were emotionally or financially dominated by their partner were 52% likelier to catch the virus.

"Women with violent or controlling male partners are at increased risk of infection," say the authors, led by Kristin Dunkle, a University of Michigan epidemiologist.

"We postulate that abusive men are more likely to have HIV and impose risky sexual practices on partners." Feminists have long warned that gender violence and gender inequality are major, but tragically unpublicised, factors in spreading the global Aids epidemic.

But facts to back this contention have, until now, been rare.

In their annual update last December, UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated the global tally of people infected with AIDS or the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 2003 to be around 40-million.

Two-thirds of this total live in sub-Saharan Africa, of which an overwhelming majority are women and girls.

The research is published in Saturday's issue of The Lancet, the British medical weekly.

South African organisations who took part included the Gender and Health Group of the Medical Research Council and the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital at the University of Witwatersrand. - Sapa-AFP