1. Identifying, linking, and treating people who inject drugs and were recently infected with HIV in the context of a network-based intervention
- Author
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Nikolopoulos, Georgios K., Psichogiou, Mina, Giallouros, George, Pantavou, Katerina, Pavlitina, Eirini, Papadopoulou, Martha, Williams, Leslie D., Hadjikou, Andria, Kakalou, Eleni, Skoutelis, Athanasios, Protopapas, Konstantinos, Antoniadou, Anastasia, Boulmetis, George, Paraskevis, Dimitrios, Hatzakis, Angelos, Friedman, Samuel R., Nikolopoulos, Georgios K. [0000-0002-3307-0246], Pantavou, Katerina [0000-0002-9176-4369], and Paraskevis, Dimitrios [0000-0001-6167-7152]
- Subjects
Adult ,Male ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Health (social science) ,Social Psychology ,Anti-HIV Agents ,Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) ,HIV Infections ,Context (language use) ,medicine.disease_cause ,Article ,Disease Outbreaks ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Intervention (counseling) ,Humans ,Medicine ,030212 general & internal medicine ,Substance Abuse, Intravenous ,030505 public health ,Greece ,business.industry ,Transmission (medicine) ,Public health ,Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health ,Middle Aged ,Viral Load ,Treatment as prevention ,Family medicine ,Female ,0305 other medical science ,business ,Risk Reduction Behavior ,Viral load ,Contact tracing - Abstract
Identifying and linking people to care soon after HIV infection could limit viral transmission and protect their health. This work aims at describing the continuum of care among recently HIV-infected people who inject drugs (PWID) and participated in an intervention in the context of an HIV outbreak in Athens, Greece. The Transmission Reduction Intervention Project (TRIP) conducted risk network-based contact tracing and screened people for recent HIV infection. A comprehensive approach with a case management component that aimed to remove barriers to accessing care was adopted. Follow-up data on antiretroviral treatment (ART) and HIV-RNA levels were obtained from HIV clinics. TRIP enrolled 45 recently HIV-infected PWID (80% male) with a median viral load at recruitment of 5.43 log10 copies/mL. Of the recently infected persons in TRIP, 87% were linked to care of these, 77% started ART and of those on ART, 89% achieved viral load
- Published
- 2019