Temporal trends in the epidemiology of HIV in Turkey.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to analyze the temporal trends of HIV epidemiology in Turkey from 2011 to 2016. METHOD: Thirty-four teams from 28 centers at 17 different cities participated in this retrospective study. Participating centers were asked to complete a structured form containing questions about epidemiologic, demographic and clinical characteristics of patients presented with new HIV diagnosis between 2011 and 2016. Demographic data from all centers (complete or partial) were included in the analyses. For the cascade of care analysis, 15 centers that provided full data from 2011 to 2016 were included. Overall and annual distributions of the data were calculated as percentages and Chi square test was used to determine temporal changes. RESULTS: A total of 2,953 patients between 2011 and 2016 were included. Overall male to female ratio was 5:1 with a significant increase in the number of male cases from 2011 to 2016 (p 500 cells/mm(3) while 46.7% presented with CD4 T cell count of <350 cells/mm(3) . Among newly diagnosed cases, 79% were retained in care, and all such cases initiated ART with 73% achieving viral suppression after six months of antiretroviral therapy. CONCLUSION: The epidemiologic profile of HIV infected individuals is changing rapidly in Turkey with an increasing trend in the number of newly diagnosed people disclosing themselves as MSM. New diagnoses were mostly at young age. Late diagnosis was found to be challenging issue. Despite unavailability of data for the first 90, Turkey is close to the last two steps of 90-90-90 targets.