TY - JOUR
T1 - Molecular epidemiology of HIV-1 subtype A in former Soviet Union countries
AU - Aibekova, Lazzat
AU - Foley, Brian
AU - Hortelano, Gonzalo
AU - Raees, Muhammad
AU - Abdraimov, Sabit
AU - Toichuev, Rakhmanbek
AU - Ali, Syed
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright: © 2018 Aibekova et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2018/2
Y1 - 2018/2
N2 - While in other parts of the world it is on decline, incidence of HIV infection continues to rise in the former Soviet Union (FSU) countries. The present study was conducted to investigate the patterns and modes of HIV transmission in FSU countries. We performed phylogenetic analysis of publicly available 2705 HIV-1 subtype A pol sequences from thirteen FSU countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Our analysis showed that the clusters from FSU countries were intermixed, indicating a possible role of transmigration in HIV transmission. Injection drug use was found to be the most frequent mode of transmission, while the clusters from PWID and heterosexual transmission were intermixed, indicating bridging of HIV infection across populations. To control the expanding HIV epidemic in this region, harm reduction strategies should be focused on three modes of transmission, namely, cross-border migration, injection drug use and heterosexual.
AB - While in other parts of the world it is on decline, incidence of HIV infection continues to rise in the former Soviet Union (FSU) countries. The present study was conducted to investigate the patterns and modes of HIV transmission in FSU countries. We performed phylogenetic analysis of publicly available 2705 HIV-1 subtype A pol sequences from thirteen FSU countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Our analysis showed that the clusters from FSU countries were intermixed, indicating a possible role of transmigration in HIV transmission. Injection drug use was found to be the most frequent mode of transmission, while the clusters from PWID and heterosexual transmission were intermixed, indicating bridging of HIV infection across populations. To control the expanding HIV epidemic in this region, harm reduction strategies should be focused on three modes of transmission, namely, cross-border migration, injection drug use and heterosexual.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0191891
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0191891
M3 - Article
C2 - 29389951
AN - SCOPUS:85041340765
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 13
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 2
M1 - e0191891
ER -