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      Optimizing HIV prevention and treatment outcomes for persons with substance use in Central Asia: what will it take?

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          Abstract

          Purpose of review

          To summarize the status of HIV and substance use in Central Asia and discuss potential ways to move forward to effective epidemic control among people who inject drugs (PWID) in the region and beyond.

          Recent findings

          PWID and their partners remain the population most affected by HIV in Central Asia. Lack of effective substance use prevention and treatment options and limited involvement of PWID-led community-based organizations in HIV programs, combined with the requirement for official registration, stigma and discrimination of PWID, and criminalization of drug use remain key barriers to effective HIV prevention and treatment.

          Summary

          Sustainable HIV epidemic control among PWID will not be feasible without decriminalization of drug use, addressing stigma and discrimination and policy changes to enhance uptake of HIV-related prevention, treatment and support services by PWID. It is also critical to ensure adoption of innovations, particularly those that combine evidence-based biomedical, behavioral and structural interventions tailored to the needs of the PWID.

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          Most cited references45

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          Treatment of medical, psychiatric, and substance-use comorbidities in people infected with HIV who use drugs.

          HIV-infected drug users have increased age-matched morbidity and mortality compared with HIV-infected people who do not use drugs. Substance-use disorders negatively affect the health of HIV-infected drug users, who also have frequent medical and psychiatric comorbidities that complicate HIV treatment and prevention. Evidence-based treatments are available for the management of substance-use disorders, mental illness, HIV and other infectious complications such as viral hepatitis and tuberculosis, and many non-HIV-associated comorbidities. Tuberculosis co-infection in HIV-infected drug users, including disease caused by drug-resistant strains, is acquired and transmitted as a consequence of inadequate prescription of antiretroviral therapy, poor adherence, and repeated interfaces with congregate settings such as prisons. Medication-assisted therapies provide the strongest evidence for HIV treatment and prevention efforts, yet are often not available where they are needed most. Antiretroviral therapy, when prescribed and adherence is at an optimum, improves health-related outcomes for HIV infection and many of its comorbidities, including tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, and renal and cardiovascular disease. Simultaneous clinical management of multiple comorbidities in HIV-infected drug users might result in complex pharmacokinetic drug interactions that must be adequately addressed. Moreover, interventions to improve adherence to treatment, including integration of health services delivery, are needed. Multifaceted, interdisciplinary approaches are urgently needed to achieve parity in health outcomes in HIV-infected drug users. Copyright 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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            The perfect storm: incarceration and the high-risk environment perpetuating transmission of HIV, hepatitis C virus, and tuberculosis in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

            Despite global reductions in HIV incidence and mortality, the 15 UNAIDS-designated countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) that gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 constitute the only region where both continue to rise. HIV transmission in EECA is fuelled primarily by injection of opioids, with harsh criminalisation of drug use that has resulted in extraordinarily high levels of incarceration. Consequently, people who inject drugs, including those with HIV, hepatitis C virus, and tuberculosis, are concentrated within prisons. Evidence-based primary and secondary prevention of HIV using opioid agonist therapies such as methadone and buprenorphine is available in prisons in only a handful of EECA countries (methadone or buprenorphine in five countries and needle and syringe programmes in three countries), with none of them meeting recommended coverage levels. Similarly, antiretroviral therapy coverage, especially among people who inject drugs, is markedly under-scaled. Russia completely bans opioid agonist therapies and does not support needle and syringe programmes-with neither available in prisons-despite the country's high incarceration rate and having the largest burden of people with HIV who inject drugs in the region. Mathematical modelling for Ukraine suggests that high levels of incarceration in EECA countries facilitate HIV transmission among people who inject drugs, with 28-55% of all new HIV infections over the next 15 years predicted to be attributable to heightened HIV transmission risk among currently or previously incarcerated people who inject drugs. Scaling up of opioid agonist therapies within prisons and maintaining treatment after release would yield the greatest HIV transmission reduction in people who inject drugs. Additional analyses also suggest that at least 6% of all incident tuberculosis cases, and 75% of incident tuberculosis cases in people who inject drugs are due to incarceration. Interventions that reduce incarceration itself and effectively intervene with prisoners to screen, diagnose, and treat addiction and HIV, hepatitis C virus, and tuberculosis are urgently needed to stem the multiple overlapping epidemics concentrated in prisons.
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              Alcohol Use and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Infection: Current Knowledge, Implications, and Future Directions.

              Alcohol use is common among people living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). In this narrative review, we describe literature regarding alcohol's impact on transmission, care, coinfections, and comorbidities that are common among people living with HIV (PLWH), as well as literature regarding interventions to address alcohol use and its influences among PLWH. This narrative review identifies alcohol use as a risk factor for HIV transmission, as well as a factor impacting the clinical manifestations and management of HIV. Alcohol use appears to have additive and potentially synergistic effects on common HIV-related comorbidities. We find that interventions to modify drinking and improve HIV-related risks and outcomes have had limited success to date, and we recommend research in several areas. Consistent with Office of AIDS Research/National Institutes of Health priorities, we suggest research to better understand how and at what levels alcohol influences comorbid conditions among PLWH, to elucidate the mechanisms by which alcohol use is impacting comorbidities, and to understand whether decreases in alcohol use improve HIV-relevant outcomes. This should include studies regarding whether state-of-the-art medications used to treat common coinfections are safe for PLWH who drink alcohol. We recommend that future research among PLWH include validated self-report measures of alcohol use and/or biological measurements, ideally both. Additionally, subgroup variation in associations should be identified to ensure that the risks of particularly vulnerable populations are understood. This body of research should serve as a foundation for a next generation of intervention studies to address alcohol use from transmission to treatment of HIV. Intervention studies should inform implementation efforts to improve provision of alcohol-related interventions and treatments for PLWH in healthcare settings. By making further progress on understanding how alcohol use affects PLWH in the era of HIV as a chronic condition, this research should inform how we can mitigate transmission, achieve viral suppression, and avoid exacerbating common comorbidities of HIV and alcohol use and make progress toward the 90-90-90 goals for engagement in the HIV treatment cascade.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Curr Opin HIV AIDS
                Curr Opin HIV AIDS
                COHIV
                Current Opinion in HIV and AIDS
                Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
                1746-630X
                1746-6318
                September 2019
                24 June 2019
                : 14
                : 5
                : 374-380
                Affiliations
                ICAP at Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, Almaty, Kazakhstan
                Author notes
                Correspondence to Anna P. Deryabina, 34/1 Samal -3, Almaty 050051, Kazakhstan. Tel: +7 727 2631572; e-mail: annaderyabina@ 123456icap.kz
                Article
                COH140508 00006
                10.1097/COH.0000000000000565
                6688715
                31219889
                ee188d62-dad0-43c8-a289-f64b6077ad08
                Copyright © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (CCBY-NC-ND), where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially without permission from the journal. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

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                CONCENTRATED EPIDEMICS: Edited by Sheena McCormack, Rachel Baggaley and Kevin M. DeCock
                Custom metadata
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                central asia,hiv,people who inject drugs
                central asia, hiv, people who inject drugs

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