Community-based early HIV testing and treatment could successfully manage and prevent emerging HIV outbreaks among people who inject drugs, study suggests

Press release issued: 17 June 2024

Community-based testing and treatment response to Glasgow’s HIV outbreak among people who inject drugs (PWID) successfully brought the 2015 outbreak under control, modelling led by academics at the University of Bristol suggests. The study’s findings, published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases (JID), indicate that approximately three times as many people would have been infected by 2020 if these interventions had not been implemented.

The researchers also showed that early implementation of HIV testing and treatment improvements could have further reduced the size of the outbreak. Optimising HIV testing and treatment before the outbreak was suspected could have prevented it altogether.

The study was carried out in collaboration with NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde (GGC) and Public Health Scotland after an outbreak of HIV was identified among PWID GGC region of Scotland in 2015.

Read the full University of Bristol news item

Paper: ‘Testing and treatment interventions in community settings key to controlling a recent human immunodeficiency virus outbreak among people who inject drugs in Glasgow: a modeling study’ by Lara I Allen, Hannah Fraser, Jack Stone, Peter Vickerman, Matthew Hickman et al. in The Journal of Infectious Diseases [open access]