HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), which is prevalent all over the world and has become a social threat due to its high lethality rate. Although it is important to identify and deal with high-risk populations to control HIV, it is difficult to accurately measure the risk of infection by self-reported sexual behavior surveys.
Therefore, a method was devised to estimate the possibility of HIV epidemic from the epidemic level of genital herpes (the ratio of infected people to the total).Genital herpes has also been observed in people with relatively low-risk sexual behavior for sexually transmitted diseases, and accurate epidemic levels are readily available.However, there are many unclear points about the relationship between genital herpes and the HIV epidemic, and the accuracy has not been clarified.
This time, a research team at Hokkaido University has developed an epidemic simulator of HIV and genital herpes on an individual-level sexual contact network. It was clarified that the relationship between HIV and genital herpes is different from the sexual contact network structure, and that the epidemic level of genital herpes alone can explain only about 4% of the epidemic level of HIV.As an improvement method, it was also clarified that the HIV epidemic level can be estimated by about 9% by combining the epidemic level of genital herpes with the network statistics.
Based on the simulator constructed in this study, it is expected that the HIV epidemic risk assessment (investigation / evaluation) will be realized from the actual epidemiological data of genital herpes.In addition, it is expected that more detailed HIV infection risk assessment will be possible by considering epidemiological information on sexually transmitted diseases other than genital herpes at the same time, and it is expected to contribute to effective control of sexually transmitted diseases.
Paper information: [AIDS] Sexual network drivers of HIV and herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) transmission
