Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2025 Jul:131:105699.
doi: 10.1016/j.meegid.2024.105699. Epub 2024 Dec 5.

Identifying the unknown: Application of molecular epidemiology tools to identify clustering and HIV transmission routes in Poland

Marcin Horecki  1 , Karol Serwin  2 , Iwona Cielniak  3 , Ewa Siwak  4 , Monika Bociąga Jasik  5 , Anna Kalinowska-Nowak  5 , Błażej Rozpłochowski  6 , Bogusz Aksak-Wąs  2 , Magdalena Witak-Jędra  7 , Aleksandra Szymczak  8 , Bartosz Szetela  8 , Elżbieta Mularska  9 , Adam Witor  9 , Paweł Jakubowski  10 , Maria Hlebowicz  11 , Anita Olczak  12 , Władysław Łojewski  13 , Elżbieta Jabłonowska  14 , Kaja Mielczak  2 , Piotr Ząbek  15 , Miłosz Parczewski  2 , Nadine Lübke  16 , Martin Obermeyer  17 , Anna Urbańska  2 , Malwina Karasińska-Cieślak  2
Affiliations
Free article

Identifying the unknown: Application of molecular epidemiology tools to identify clustering and HIV transmission routes in Poland

Marcin Horecki et al. Infect Genet Evol. 2025 Jul.
Free article

Abstract

Background: Understanding the dynamics of HIV-1 transmission is essential for developing effective screening and intervention strategies. Viral genetic sequences provide valuable information that can be used to infer the history and patterns of viral transmission.

Purpose: Our study explores the structure and dynamics of HIV transmissions in Poland from 1999 to 2022 to elucidate key patterns related with national epidemics.

Methods: To understand the temporal dynamics of transmission routes we examined HIV pol sequence data from 5705 Polish PWH. The HIV-TRAnsmission Cluster Engine (HIV-TRACE) was utilized to identify potential links between different risk groups and putative links to individuals with unreported transmission risk.

Results: Our analyses generated 503 clusters, containing 3942 individuals, and identified 13,917 putative links. Approximately 69.1 % of the sequences formed clusters. In the dataset 32.2 % of individuals were reported MSM transmission route, 7.9 % by heterosexual, and 5.6 % by PWID transmissions. The transmission route was unknown for 54.2 % of patients. Putative transmissions from MSM to all other groups revealed that 45.1 % of links lead to people with unregistered transmission mode. For heterosexual patients, 40.2 % of connections were directed to patients lacking information on infection routes and 30.5 % to MSM individuals. Our analysis unveiled that 45.1 % of cases with unreported transmission routes may be identified as MSM, while 3.5 % might be potential non-disclosed MSM.

Conclusions: Genetic linkages can provide valuable insights into the transmission dynamics among individuals, even in cases where transmission risk information is missing or unreported. The observed association between MSM and unreported cases highlights the potential of molecular epidemiology to complete missing patient data.

Keywords: HIV; Hivtrace; Molecular epidemiology; Transmission clusters; Transmission routes.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests. Marcin Horecki reports financial support was provided by National Science Centre Poland. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

References

Publication types

Substances

LinkOut - more resources