Epidemic dispersion of HIV and HCV in a population of co-infected Romanian injecting drug users

Co-infections with HIV and HCV are very frequent among people who inject drugs (PWID). However, very few studies comparatively reconstructed the transmission patterns of both viruses in the same population. We have recruited 117 co-infected PWID during a recent HIV outbreak in Romania. Phylogenetic analyses were performed on HIV and HCV sequences in order to characterize and compare transmission dynamics of the two viruses. Three large HIV clusters (2 subtype F1 and one CRF14_BG) and thirteen smaller HCV transmission networks (genotypes 1a, 1b, 3a, 4a and 4d) were identified. Eighty (65%) patients were both in HIV and HCV transmission chains and 70 of those shared the same HIV and HCV cluster with at least one other patient. Molecular clock analysis indicated that all identified HIV clusters originated around 2006, while the origin of the different HCV clusters ranged between 1980 (genotype 1b) and 2011 (genotypes 3a and 4d). HCV infection preceded HIV infection in 80.3% of cases. Coincidental transmission of HIV and HCV was estimated to be rather low (19.65%) and associated with an outbreak among PWID during detention in the same penitentiary. This study has reconstructed and compared the dispersion of these two viruses in a PWID population. © 2017 Paraschiv 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

HIV outbreaks among people who inject drugs in Europe, North America and Israel

During 2011–16, HIV outbreaks occurred among people who inject drugs (PWID) in Canada (southeastern Saskatchewan), Greece (Athens), Ireland (Dublin), Israel (Tel Aviv), Luxembourg, Romania (Bucharest), Scotland (Glasgow), and USA (Scott County, Indiana). Factors common to many of these outbreaks included community economic problems, homelessness, and changes in drug injection patterns. The outbreaks differed in size (from under 100 to over 1000 newly reported HIV cases among PWID) and in the extent to which combined prevention had been implemented before, during, and after the outbreaks. Countries need to ensure high coverage of HIV prevention services and coverage higher than the current UNAIDS recommendation might be needed in areas in which short acting drugs are injected. In addition, monitoring of PWID with special attention for changing drug use patterns, risk behaviours, and susceptible subgroups (eg, PWID experiencing homelessness) needs to be in place to prevent or rapidly detect and contain new HIV outbreaks