Changes in HIV care continuum indicators among community-based samples of HIV-infected people who inject drugs and men who have sex with men across 21 cities in India

Post Date: 
2022-10-06
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Countries: 
Publication: 
AIDS Care
Summary: 

Monitoring key populations' progress towards UNAIDS 90-90-90 targets is essential to achieving HIV/AIDS epidemic control. Using serial cross-sectional data, we evaluated changes in HIV care continuum among people who inject drugs(PWID) and men who have sex with men(MSM) in India. Cross-sectional baseline (2012/2013) and follow-up (2016/2017) samples were recruited using respondent-driven sampling across 21 cities. All participants were tested for HIV and RNA measured in HIV-positive participants. Linear regression was used to model temporal site-level changes in continuum indicators in MSM versus PWID. At baseline, we recruited 2,544 HIV-infected PWID and 1,086 HIV-infected MSM. At follow-up, we recruited 2,517 HIV-infected PWID and 1,763 HIV-infected MSM. At baseline, there were no significant differences in continuum indicators between MSM and PWID. At follow-up, compared to PWID, the proportion of MSM reaching each care continuum indicator-awareness of status, receipt of care, ART use, viral suppression-increased by 15-33 percentage points: 78% of MSM versus 49% of PWID were aware of their status (p < 0.01); 56% of MSM versus 32% of PWID were virologically suppressed (p = 0.05). MSM showed marked improvements across the care continuum, whereas PWID lagged and may require additional intervention. Differential improvement in HIV engagement may necessitate population-specific interventions and routine surveillance to facilitate HIV elimination.

Citation: 
Prata Menezes NS, Solomon SS, Mcfall AM, Srikrishnan AK, Vasudevan CK, Kumar MS, Celentano DD, Mehta SH, Lucas GM. Changes in HIV care continuum indicators among community-based samples of HIV-infected people who inject drugs and men who have sex with men across 21 cities in India. AIDS Care. 2022 Sep 17:1-10. doi: 10.1080/09540121.2022.2119470. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36120904.