The Impact of Human Mobility on HIV Transmission in Kenya.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Isdory A
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4657931 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Western Kenya suffers a highly endemic and also very heterogeneous epidemic of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Although female sex workers (FSW) and their male clients are known to be at high risk for HIV, HIV prevalence across regions in Western Kenya is not strongly correlated with the fraction of women engaged in commercial sex. An agent-based network model of HIV transmission, geographically stratified at the county level, was fit to the HIV epidemic, scale-up of interventions, and populations of FSW in Western Kenya under two assumptions about the potential mobility of FSW clients. In the first, all clients were assumed to be resident in the same geographies as their interactions with FSW. In the second, some clients were considered non-resident and engaged only in interactions with FSW, but not in longer-term non-FSW partnerships in these geographies. Under both assumptions, the model successfully reconciled disparate geographic patterns of FSW and HIV prevalence. Transmission patterns in the model suggest a greater role for FSW in local transmission when clients were resident to the counties, with 30.0% of local HIV transmissions attributable to current and former FSW and clients, compared to 21.9% when mobility of clients was included. Nonetheless, the overall epidemic drivers remained similar, with risky behavior in the general population dominating transmission in high-prevalence counties. Our modeling suggests that co-location of high-risk populations and generalized epidemics can further amplify the spread of HIV, but that large numbers of formal FSW and clients are not required to observe or mechanistically explain high HIV prevalence in the general population.
| S-EPMC6326217 | biostudies-literature
Project description:IntroductionHuman mobility is a critical aspect of existence and survival, but may compromise care engagement among people living with HIV (PLHIV). We examined the association between various forms of human mobility with retention in HIV care and antiretroviral treatment (ART) interruptions.MethodsIn a cohort of adult PLHIV in Kenya and Uganda, we collected surveys in 2016 about past 6-month travel and lifetime migration histories, including reasons and locations, and engagement in HIV care defined as (1) discontinuation of care, and (2) history of a treatment interruption among those who remained in care. We estimated associations between mobility and these care engagement outcomes via logistic regression, adjusted for sex, prior mobility, age, region, marital status, household wealth, and education.ResultsAmong 1081 participants, 56 (5%) reported having discontinued care; among those in care, 104 (10%) reported treatment interruption. Past-year migration was associated with a higher risk of discontinuation of care (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 1.98, 95% CI 1.08-3.63). In sex-stratified models, the association was somewhat attenuated in women, but remained robust among men. Past-year migration was associated with reduced odds of having a treatment interruption among men (aOR 0.51, 95% CI 0.34-0.77) but not among women (aOR 2.67, 95% CI 0.78, 9.16). Travel in the past 6 months was not associated with discontinuation of care or treatment interruptions.ConclusionsWe observed both negative and protective effects of recent migration on care engagement and ART use that were most pronounced among men in this cohort. Migration can break ties to ongoing care, but for men, who have more agency in the decision to migrate, may foster new care and treatment strategies. Strategies that enable health facilities to support individuals throughout the process of transferring care could alleviate the risk of care disengagement.
| S-EPMC10675546 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Human leukocyte antigen class I (HLA)-restricted CD8(+) T lymphocyte (CTL) responses are crucial to HIV-1 control. Although HIV can evade these responses, the longer-term impact of viral escape mutants remains unclear, as these variants can also reduce intrinsic viral fitness. To address this, we here developed a metric to determine the degree of HIV adaptation to an HLA profile. We demonstrate that transmission of viruses that are pre-adapted to the HLA molecules expressed in the recipient is associated with impaired immunogenicity, elevated viral load and accelerated CD4(+) T cell decline. Furthermore, the extent of pre-adaptation among circulating viruses explains much of the variation in outcomes attributed to the expression of certain HLA alleles. Thus, viral pre-adaptation exploits 'holes' in the immune response. Accounting for these holes may be key for vaccine strategies seeking to elicit functional responses from viral variants, and to HIV cure strategies that require broad CTL responses to achieve successful eradication of HIV reservoirs.
| S-EPMC4899163 | biostudies-literature
Project description:HIV-1 transmission patterns within and between populations at different risk of HIV-1 acquisition in Kenya are not well understood. We investigated HIV-1 transmission networks in men who have sex with men (MSM), injecting drug users (IDU), female sex workers (FSW) and heterosexuals (HET) in coastal Kenya. We used maximum-likelihood and Bayesian phylogenetics to analyse new (N?=?163) and previously published (N?=?495) HIV-1 polymerase sequences collected during 2005-2019. Of the 658 sequences, 131 (20%) were from MSM, 58 (9%) IDU, 109 (17%) FSW, and 360 (55%) HET. Overall, 206 (31%) sequences formed 61 clusters. Most clusters (85%) consisted of sequences from the same risk group, suggesting frequent within-group transmission. The remaining clusters were mixed between HET/MSM (7%), HET/FSW (5%), and MSM/FSW (3%) sequences. One large IDU-exclusive cluster was found, indicating an independent sub-epidemic among this group. Phylodynamic analysis of this cluster revealed a steady increase in HIV-1 infections among IDU since the estimated origin of the cluster in 1987. Our results suggest mixing between high-risk groups and heterosexual populations and could be relevant for the development of targeted HIV-1 prevention programmes in coastal Kenya.
| S-EPMC7174422 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Climate change and variability influence temperature and rainfall, which impact vector abundance and the dynamics of vector-borne disease transmission. Climate change is projected to increase the frequency and intensity of extreme climate events. Mosquito-borne diseases, such as dengue fever, are primarily transmitted by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Freshwater availability and temperature affect dengue vector populations via a variety of biological processes and thus influence the ability of mosquitoes to effectively transmit disease. However, the effect of droughts, floods, heat waves, and cold waves is not well understood. Using vector, climate, and dengue disease data collected between 2013 and 2019 in Kenya, this retrospective cohort study aims to elucidate the impact of extreme rainfall and temperature on mosquito abundance and the risk of arboviral infections. To define extreme periods of rainfall and land surface temperature (LST), we calculated monthly anomalies as deviations from long-term means (1983-2019 for rainfall, 2000-2019 for LST) across four study locations in Kenya. We classified extreme climate events as the upper and lower 10% of these calculated LST or rainfall deviations. Monthly Ae. aegypti abundance was recorded in Kenya using four trapping methods. Blood samples were also collected from children with febrile illness presenting to four field sites and tested for dengue virus using an IgG enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR). We found that mosquito eggs and adults were significantly more abundant one month following an abnormally wet month. The relationship between mosquito abundance and dengue risk follows a non-linear association. Our findings suggest that early warnings and targeted interventions during periods of abnormal rainfall and temperature, especially flooding, can potentially contribute to reductions in risk of viral transmission.
| S-EPMC7971569 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Humans move frequently and tend to carry parasites among areas with endemic malaria and into areas where local transmission is unsustainable. Human-mediated parasite mobility can thus sustain parasite populations in areas where they would otherwise be absent. Data describing human mobility and malaria epidemiology can help classify landscapes into parasite demographic sources and sinks, ecological concepts that have parallels in malaria control discussions of transmission foci. By linking transmission to parasite flow, it is possible to stratify landscapes for malaria control and elimination, as sources are disproportionately important to the regional persistence of malaria parasites. Here, we identify putative malaria sources and sinks for pre-elimination Namibia using malaria parasite rate (PR) maps and call data records from mobile phones, using a steady-state analysis of a malaria transmission model to infer where infections most likely occurred. We also examined how the landscape of transmission and burden changed from the pre-elimination setting by comparing the location and extent of predicted pre-elimination transmission foci with modeled incidence for 2009. This comparison suggests that while transmission was spatially focal pre-elimination, the spatial distribution of cases changed as burden declined. The changing spatial distribution of burden could be due to importation, with cases focused around importation hotspots, or due to heterogeneous application of elimination effort. While this framework is an important step towards understanding progressive changes in malaria distribution and the role of subnational transmission dynamics in a policy-relevant way, future work should account for international parasite movement, utilize real time surveillance data, and relax the steady state assumption required by the presented model.
| S-EPMC4820264 | biostudies-other
Project description:Human movements contribute to the transmission of malaria on spatial scales that exceed the limits of mosquito dispersal. Identifying the sources and sinks of imported infections due to human travel and locating high-risk sites of parasite importation could greatly improve malaria control programs. Here, we use spatially explicit mobile phone data and malaria prevalence information from Kenya to identify the dynamics of human carriers that drive parasite importation between regions. Our analysis identifies importation routes that contribute to malaria epidemiology on regional spatial scales.
| S-EPMC3675794 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundThe elicitation of contact information, notification and testing of sex partners of HIV infected patients (aPS), is an effective HIV testing strategy in low-income settings but may not necessarily be affordable. We applied WHO guidelines and the International Society for Pharmaco-economics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) guidelines to conduct cost and budget impact analyses, respectively, of aPS compared to current practice of HIV testing services (HTS) in Kisumu County, Kenya.MethodsUsing study data and time motion studies, we constructed an Excel-based tool to estimate costs and the budget impact of aPS. Cost data were collected from selected facilities in Kisumu County. We report the annual total and unit costs of HTS, incremental total and unit costs for aPS, and the budget impact of scaling up aPS over a 5-year horizon. We also considered a task-shifted scenario that used community health workers (CHWs) rather than facility based health workers and conducted sensitivity analyses assuming different rates of scale up of aPS.ResultsThe average unit costs for HIV testing among HIV-infected index clients was US$ 25.36 per client and US$ 17.86 per client using nurses and CHWs, respectively. The average incremental costs for providing enhanced aPS in Kisumu County were US$ 1,092,161 and US$ 753,547 per year, using nurses and CHWs, respectively. The average incremental cost of scaling up aPS over a five period was 45% higher when using nurses compared to using CHWs (US$ 5,460,837 and US$ 3,767,738 respectively). Over the five years, the upper-bound budget impact of nurse-model was US$ 1,767,863, 63% and 35% of which were accounted for by aPS costs and ART costs, respectively. The CHW model incurred an upper-bound incremental cost of US$ 1,258,854, which was 71.2% lower than the nurse-based model. The budget impact was sensitive to the level of aPS coverage and ranged from US$ 28,547 for 30% coverage using CHWs in 2014 to US$ 1,267,603 for 80% coverage using nurses in 2018.ConclusionScaling aPS using nurses has minimal budget impact but not cost-saving over a five-year period. Targeting aPS to newly-diagnosed index cases and task-shifting to community health workers is recommended.
| S-EPMC6142360 | biostudies-literature
Project description:IntroductionSuccessful management of pediatric and adult human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease includes lifelong administration of antiretroviral therapy (ART). The need for the continuous use of antiretroviral drugs throughout the life course poses a challenge to children, adolescents, and adults living with HIV and their caregivers. Historically, treatment interruptions have been viewed as a negative therapeutic strategy. Recently, however, treatment interruptions or treatment reduction strategies have become a focus of investigations as innovative approaches to the long-term management of HIV disease. Current challenges with treatment interruptions include identifying an appropriate timeframe for length of interruptions and identifying HIV patient populations in whom the treatment interruption can be successful.ObjectiveIn this review, we aimed at summarizing recent studies of planned and unplanned treatment interruptions in children and adults living with HIV.Materials and methodsWe searched two databases (PubMed and Cochrane Controlled Trials Register) using keywords (HIV OR AIDS OR acquired immunodeficiency syndrome OR HIV-1 OR antiretroviral) AND (treatment interruption OR planned interruption OR therapeutic interruption OR unplanned interruption), for published randomized and nonrandomized clinical trials and observational cohort studies in children and adults (from birth to 99 years of age) in global settings covering a period from 2012 to 2018. In this review, only the studies that contained pediatric and adolescent populations with baseline immunological, virological, and clinical characteristics and outcomes after treatment interruption were included.ResultsA total of 174 eligible citations from the two databases were identified. We identified 10 prospective treatment interruption studies on children (five studies) and adults (five studies) during 2012-2018 with a total of 863 pediatric and 273 adult subjects. Collectively, recent studies on children and adults with HIV infection suggest that treatment interruptions with proper monitoring can be successful by instituting well-defined immunological and virological parameters or thresholds such as CD4 count, CD4%, and HIV RNA viral load that identify low-risk populations with treatment failure. In addition to standard virological and immunological outcome measurements, selected biomarkers that help detect early immune activation may also be useful in the monitoring of treatment interruption.ConclusionTreatment interruptions in adult and especially pediatric patients with well-controlled HIV disease may provide an alternative opportunity to optimize long-term HIV management by minimizing drug-associated toxicity and improving long-term adherence and quality of life.
| S-EPMC6005325 | biostudies-literature
Project description:We performed a molecular phylogenetic study on HIV-1 polymerase sequences of men who have sex with men (MSM) and heterosexual patient samples in Kenya to characterize any observed HIV-1 transmission networks. HIV-1 polymerase sequences were obtained from samples in Nairobi and coastal Kenya from 84 MSM, 226 other men, and 364 women from 2005 to 2010. Using Bayesian phylogenetics, we tested whether sequences clustered by sexual orientation and geographic location. In addition, we used trait diffusion analyses to identify significant epidemiological links and to quantify the number of transmissions between risk groups. Finally, we compared 84 MSM sequences with all HIV-1 sequences available online at GenBank. Significant clustering of sequences from MSM at both coastal Kenya and Nairobi was found, with evidence of HIV-1 transmission between both locations. Although a transmission pair between a coastal MSM and woman was confirmed, no significant HIV-1 transmission was evident between MSM and the comparison population for the predominant subtype A (60%). However, a weak but significant link was evident when studying all subtypes together. GenBank comparison did not reveal other important transmission links. Our data suggest infrequent intermingling of MSM and heterosexual HIV-1 epidemics in Kenya.
| S-EPMC3910480 | biostudies-literature