Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, SAR, China.
Shenzhen Research Institute of City University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China.
Sci Rep. 2018 Feb 5;8(1):2432. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-20864-6.
The HIV transmissions between multiple key populations make interventions difficult, particularly with multiple transmission behaviors. It remains unclear how significant the role of bridge individuals (who connect multiple communities) is in HIV transmission, and how to develop more effective intervention strategies targeting different transmission modes across key populations. In this research, we proposed a 2-layer social network framework to simulate the HIV transmissions across female sex workers (FSWs) and persons who inject drugs (PWID) through two behaviors: unprotected sex and needle-sharing. We proposed a set of intervention strategies based on the topological properties of individuals in the social network and estimated the efficacy of these strategies. Simulation studies demonstrated that bridge individuals played a significant role in HIV transmissions across the two networks. Prevention on such bridge individuals could help reduce both the scale and speed of HIV transmissions.
多个人群之间的 HIV 传播使得干预变得困难，尤其是存在多种传播行为时。目前尚不清楚桥梁人群（连接多个社区的人）在 HIV 传播中扮演的角色有多重要，也不清楚如何针对不同关键人群的不同传播模式制定更有效的干预策略。在这项研究中，我们提出了一个两层社会网络框架，通过两种行为（无保护性行为和共用针具）来模拟 HIV 在性工作者（FSWs）和注射吸毒者（PWID）之间的传播。我们基于社会网络中个体的拓扑性质提出了一系列干预策略，并估计了这些策略的效果。模拟研究表明，桥梁个体在两个网络中的 HIV 传播中起着重要作用。对这类桥梁个体进行预防，可以帮助减少 HIV 的传播规模和速度。
