Enhanced HIV-1 surveillance using molecular epidemiology to study and monitor HIV-1 outbreaks among intravenous drug users (IDUs) in Athens and Bucharest

A network intervention that locates and intervenes with recently HIV-infected persons: The Transmission Reduction Intervention Project (TRIP)

“…The HIV epidemic slowed down before TRIP began. The recent seeds we were recruiting later at TRIP were members of recent infection chains at a time when improvements in harm reduction availability, the effects of ARISTOTLE as an intervention, drug users’ own protective actions, fluctuating behavioral risk, the firewalls network effect, and declining community viral loads due to ART use had reduced the rate of new infections2124404142. Thus, although the recruitment of other recents is higher in the networks of recents for all the reasons stated here, they are likely to be in parts of the PWID community where long term HIV is less prevalent.…”

Molecular epidemiology of HIV-1 infection in Europe: An overview

“…Although F1 clade still predominates in the PWID epidemic, other clades, including CRF14_BG, have also been found (Niculescu et al, 2015). The outbreak of CRF4_BG strains among PWID was found to have originated from Spain, whilst the two subtype F1 sub-outbreaks originated from regionally prevalent Romanian strains (Paraskevis et al, 2015b).…”

“…The origin of clades associated with PWID differs to the sexually transmitted epidemics in Greece. The origin of the four different clades circulating among PWID during an outbreak in Athens (detected in early 2011), was Afghanistan/Iran (CRF35_AD), Romania (CRF14_BG) and Greece (subtypes A and B) (Niculescu et al, 2015;Paraskevis et al, 2013a;Paraskevis et al, 2015b).…”

Molecular epidemiology of HIV-1 in Iceland: Early introductions, transmission dynamics and recent outbreaks among injection drug users

“…The molecular epidemiology of HIV-1 has been studied extensively both globally, (Faria et al, 2014;Wertheim et al, 2014) and in limited geographic settings, (Aldous et al, 2012;Bruhn et al, 2014;Ciccozzi et al, 2013;Esbjornsson et al, 2016;Kouyos et al, 2010;Mendoza et al, 2014;Paraskevis et al, 2015) to increase the understanding of the drivers of HIV-1 transmission and to increase the focus of preventive strategies (Brenner et al, 2013).…”