David D Celentano

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health | JHSPH · Department of Epidemiology

Introduction Globally, there have been significant declines in HIV incidence over the past two decades, but this decline is slowing, and in some settings, declines have stalled or are growing—particularly where epidemics are concentrated in key populations (KPs). Understanding temporal changes in HIV incidence among KP is critical yet, due to logis...

Background and aims People with HIV (PWH) whose disease is controlled on anti-retroviral regimens remain at an increased risk for coronary artery disease (CAD). Traditional cardiovascular risk factors do not fully explain the residual risk in PWH suggesting contributions from nontraditional factors. Homocysteine (Hcy) may be one of these as prior w...

People living with HIV (PWH) have been shown to bear a higher burden of hepatitis B virus (HBV) due to shared routes and risk factors for transmission. Populations such as men who have sex with men (MSM) are at an increased risk of both being infected with HBV and HIV, that places them at higher risk of hepatocellular carcinoma. Using weighted and...

Background: Adult studies have demonstrated that polysubstance use increases HIV acquisition risk through increased sexual behaviors, however, few studies have examined polysubstance in young Black and Latinx sexual minority men (SMM) and transgender women (TW). Methods: We used cross-sectional data from 466 young Black and Latinx SMM and TW living...

Background: In the antiretroviral therapy (ART) era, HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) remain a considerable challenge for people with HIV, yet not all such disorders can be attributed to HIV alone. This study aimed to: (1) identify factors influencing neurocognitive impairment (NCI) utilizing the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery (NIHTB-C...

Lifetime exposures to violence among men who have sex with men (MSM) are associated with multiple psychosocial health risks and can affect engagement and outcomes of HIV treatment. This study a) explored relationships between levels of exposures to violence and HIV care continuum outcomes among MSM living with HIV in India, and b) identified psycho...

Despite increased attention and efforts to improve HIV care among female sex workers (FSWs), they continue to have suboptimal HIV outcomes. Exploring the socio-structural dynamics related to the quality of HIV care received by FSWs is critical to further strengthen interventions to improve their HIV care continuum outcomes. In this study, we conduc...

HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) remain a major challenge for people with HIV in the antiretroviral therapy era. Cocaine use may trigger/exacerbate HAND among African American (AA) adults, especially women. Between 2018 and 2019, 922 adults, predominantly AAs, with/without HIV and with/without cocaine use in Baltimore, Maryland, were...

Background Young Black and Latinx sexual minority men (SMM) and transgender women (TW) continue to suffer some of the highest burdens of HIV in the United States. Disparities are partly attributed to suboptimal uptake of HIV prevention and treatment services negatively impacted by substance use. Adult studies have demonstrated that polysubstance us...

Monitoring key populations’ progress towards UNAIDS 90-90-90 targets is essential to achieving HIV/AIDS epidemic control. Using serial cross-sectional data, we evaluated changes in HIV care continuum among people who inject drugs(PWID) and men who have sex with men(MSM) in India. Cross-sectional baseline (2012/2013) and follow-up (2016/2017) sample...

Introduction Drug-resistance testing is limited in public-sector HIV care in India, and there are few systematic samplings for prevalent drug resistance mutations (DRMs), particularly among men who have sex with men (MSM) and people who inject drugs (PWID). Methods We conducted genotypic resistance testing on 915 HIV sequences sampled from viremic...

Background: Cocaine use exacerbates human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-associated subclinical coronary atherosclerosis. We investigated whether cocaine abstinence or reduced use achieved with contingency management (CM) intervention would retard high-risk coronary plaque progression among cocaine users with HIV and subclinical coronary atheroscler...

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has threatened to diminish gains in HIV epidemic control and impacts are likely most profound among key populations in resource-limited settings. We aimed to understand the pandemic's impact on HIV-related service utilization among men who have sex with men (MSM) and people who inject drugs (PWID) across India....

Background Men who have sex with men (MSM) in low-to-middle-income countries bear a high burden of HIV and a significant proportion marry women to satisfy socio-cultural norms. It has previously been demonstrated that HIV prevalence is higher among married versus unmarried MSM, but limited data are available on HIV prevalence among their wives. Me...

Objective: To examine the association of drug use stigma with antiretroviral therapy (ART) use and HIV viral suppression among people with HIV who inject drugs in India. Design: Cross-sectional bio-behavioral survey. Methods: Between 08/2016 and 05/2017, persons aged ≥18 years who reported injection drug use in the past two years were recruite...

Objectives: To develop a general framework to assess temporal changes in lesion morphology on radiological images beyond volumetric changes and to test whether cocaine abstinence changes coronary plaque structure on serial coronary CT angiography (CTA). Methods: Chronic cocaine users with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection were prospec...

Objectives: Volumetric evaluation of coronary artery disease (CAD) allows better prediction of cardiac events. However, CAD segmentation is labor intensive. Our objective was to create an open-source deep learning (DL) model to segment coronary plaques on coronary CT angiography (CCTA). Methods: Three hundred eight individuals' 894 CCTA scans wi...

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) has the potential to transform HIV in young Black and Latinx sexual minority men (SMM) and transgender women (TW). Addressing low PrEP uptake in this population depends on the better understanding of barriers to PrEP use. This article uses an ecological framework to explore barriers to daily oral PrEP in a sample of...

Background Men who have sex with men (MSM) bear a disproportionately high burden of new HIV infections while lagging behind other populations with respect to engagement across the HIV care continuum. General risk factors for condomless anal intercourse (CAI) among MSM are well studied but there is a paucity of partner-level data, where emerging evi...

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) rollout efforts thus far have inadequately reached young people from underrepresented backgrounds. This study explores PrEP engagement among young Black and Latinx men who have sex with men, transgender women, and gender diverse individuals in three U.S. cities using an adapted PrEP continuum measure. We analyze data...

This study assessed the relationship between the quality of HIV care and treatment literacy on antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence and viral suppression among female sex workers (FSWs) living with HIV (n = 211) in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Multivariable logistic regression results indicate better patient-provider communication (AOR 1.04...

Background Despite evidence on peer navigation’s association with positive HIV outcomes, such as engagement in HIV care and antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation, the mechanisms through which peer navigation may influence these outcomes have been less explored. The purpose of this study is to describe the role of peer navigation and support on en...

Physical activity (PA) has numerous health benefits. Personalized coaching may increase adherence to PA recommendations, but it is challenging to deliver personalized coaching in a scalable manner. The objective of our study was to determine whether novel artificially intelligent (AI) coaching interventions increase PA among overweight or obese, ph...

Our objective was to assess whether human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infection directly or indirectly promotes the progression of clinical characteristics of coronary artery disease (CAD). 300 African Americans with asymptomatic CAD (210 male; age: 48.0 ± 7.2 years; 226 HIV-infected) who underwent coronary CT angiography at two time points (mean...

There is an urgent need for innovative methods to reduce transmission of bloodborne pathogens like HIV and HCV among people who inject drugs (PWID). We investigate if PWID who acquire non-pathogenic bloodborne viruses like anelloviruses and pegiviruses might be at greater risk of acquiring a bloodborne pathogen. PWID who later acquire HCV accumulat...

Purpose: We sought to explore characteristics and risk factors associated with transactional sex in a sample of young black and Latinx sexual minority cisgender men and transgender women of age 15 to 24 years who were living with or at high risk for HIV infection and whether these associations vary by gender identity and HIV status. Methods: A t...

Background: The Centers for AIDS Research (CFAR) program was established by the National Institutes of Health in 1988 to catalyze and support high impact HIV research and to develop the next generation of HIV investigators at academic institutions throughout the United States. Methods: In 2014, the Penn CFAR, the Johns Hopkins University CFAR an...

Geographic information systems (GIS) tools can be used to understand the spatial distribution of local HIV epidemics but are often underutilized, especially in low-middle income countries. We present characteristics of an HIV epidemic within Hyderabad, a large city in southern India, as a case study to highlight the utility of such data in program...

Background and Aims Over the past decades, people who inject drugs (PWID) have been impacted by the development of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) to combat HIV/AIDS, the prescription opioid crisis, and increased use of lethal synthetic opioids. We measured how these dynamics have impacted mortality among PWID in an urban U.S. city. Desi...

Background Although drug use stigma is globally pervasive, quantitative evidence of its role in hepatitis C virus (HCV) transmission is limited. We evaluated the psychometric properties of a drug use stigma scale and examined the association between drug use stigma and active HCV infection among a community-based sample of people who inject drugs (...

Background Population-level prevalence of detectable HIV viraemia (PDV) has been proposed as a metric for monitoring the population-level effectiveness of HIV treatment as prevention. We aimed to characterise temporal changes in PDV in people who inject drugs (PWID) and men who have sex with men (MSM) in India and evaluate community-level and indiv...

Objectives We aim to quantify the longitudinal growth differences during childhood and early adolescence between siblings born at different maternal ages at delivery (adult vs. adolescent/young). Methods We analyzed data from siblings of the same biological parents of the young cohort from the Young Lives Study in Peru, over 14 of follow-up. Elder...

Introduction Respondent‐driven sampling (RDS) has been an effective sampling strategy for HIV research in many settings, but has had limited success among some youth in the United States. We evaluated a modified RDS approach for sampling Black and Latinx sexual and gender minority youth (BLSGMY) and explored how lived experiences and social context...

Objectives: To assess whether HIV infection directly or indirectly promotes coronary artery disease (CAD) volume progression in a longitudinal study of African Americans. Methods: We randomly selected 300 individuals with subclinical CAD (210 male; age: 48.0 ± 7.2 years; 226 HIV infected, 174 cocaine users) from 1429 cardiovascularly asymptomati...

Introduction Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is effective in reducing HIV transmission among key populations. In India, where PrEP is not currently part of the national HIV program, little is known about PrEP awareness, willingness to use PrEP, and barriers to uptake among people who inject drugs (PWID) and men who have sex with men (MSM). Methods...

Background Population health and well-being in Latin America, the current epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, has been severely affected during the past semester. Despite the growing evidence about the link between the pandemic, its control measures, and mental health worldwide, there is still no regional evidence of the potential mental health imp...

Background: Herpes Simplex Virus Type-2 (HSV-2) seropositive persons have a 3-5 fold higher risk of acquiring HIV, possibly due to HSV-2 induced inflammation and recruitment of susceptible immune cells to exposure sites. We hypothesized cervical HSV-2 activation (i.e., viral DNA shedding and/or ulcers) preceded HIV acquisition in the Hormonal Cont...

Objective To identify redundant clinical trials evaluating statin treatment in patients with coronary artery disease from mainland China, and to estimate the number of extra major adverse cardiac events (MACEs) experienced by participants not treated with statins in those trials. Design Cross sectional study. Setting 2577 randomized clinical tria...

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a prevalent but under recognized issue among sexual minorities broadly, but especially among Black Gay and Bisexual Men (BGBM). Over the last several years, acts of IPV among BGBM made national news, drawing attention to the unique ways that IPV plays out within this particular population. Yet, little research has...

Objectives This article estimated the prevalence of self-reported HIV testing and identified associated factors among sexually active adolescent girls and young women (AGYW), aged 15-24 years, in South Africa. Study design This is a secondary data analysis of a nationally representative population-based cross-sectional multi-stage cluster survey o...

Importance Duplicate publications of randomized clinical trials are prevalent in the health-related literature. To date, few studies have assessed the interaction between duplicate publication and the language of the original publication. Objective To assess the existence of duplicate publication and the extent to which duplicate publication is as...

Objective To evaluate the association between the nature of findings and the switching of registered primary outcomes among RCTs from mainland China. Study Design and Setting This is a retrospective cohort study. We retrieved RCTs from trial registries and identified the corresponding journal articles from bibliographic databases until August 2019...

Introduction Respondent-driven sampling has been an effective sampling strategy for HIV research in many settings, but has had limited success among some youth in the United States. We evaluated a modified RDS approach for sampling Black and Latinx sexual and gender minority youth (BLSGMY) and evaluates how lived experiences and social contexts of...

Viral diversity is an important feature of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and an important predictor of disease progression and treatment response. HIV/HCV co-infection is associated with enhanced HCV replication, increased fibrosis, and the development of liver disease. HIV also increases quasispecies diversity of HCV structural genes, although...

Importance Language and indexing biases may exist among Chinese-sponsored randomized clinical trials (CS-RCTs). Such biases may threaten the validity of systematic reviews. Objective To evaluate the existence of language and indexing biases among CS-RCTs on drug interventions. Design, Setting, and Participants In this retrospective cohort study,...

Importance: Physical Activity (PA) has numerous health benefits to cancer survivors, but motivation remains problematic. Coaching may increase PA and improve survivorship outcomes, but it is challenging to deliver personalized coaching at scale Objective: To determine if the use of a novel Artificial Intelligence (AI) agent delivered by smart speak...

Over the past century, the field of epidemiology has evolved and adapted to the changing public health needs. Challenges include newly emerging public health concerns across broad and diverse content areas, new methods, and vast data sources. We recognize the need to engage and educate the next generation of epidemiologists and prepare them to tack...

Background: Data from high-income countries suggest increasing hepatitis C virus (HCV) prevalence/incidence among HIV-infected men who have sex with men (MSM), but limited data derive from low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs). Methods: We recruited 4,994 MSM from 5 states across India using respondent-driven sampling (RDS). Logistic regressio...

Young black and Latinx men who have sex with men (YBLMSM) and transgender women (YBLTW) are disproportionately impacted by HIV. Structural and social marginalization, the social barriers, and structures that unevenly distribute benefits and burdens to different groups, may contribute to inability for youth to access prevention and treatment care se...

BACKGROUND The U.S. National HIV/AIDS Strategy 2020 calls for: increasing access to care and improving outcomes of people living with HIV; and targeting biomedical prevention efforts, including access to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in communities where HIV is most heavily concentrated. Baltimore, MD, Washington, DC and Philadelphia, PA are disp...

Background: The U.S. National HIV/AIDS Strategy 2020 calls for: increasing access to care and improving outcomes of people living with HIV; and targeting biomedical prevention efforts, including access to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in communities where HIV is most heavily concentrated. Baltimore, MD, Washington, DC and Philadelphia, PA are dis...

Background: There is an urgent need to intentionally develop and expand mentoring for junior faculty from underrepresented communities in the area of HIV research. Such a goal is increasingly recognized as essential across all scientific fields because profound disparities exist regarding which doctorally prepared individuals ultimately end up ent...

People who inject drugs (PWID) face disparities in HIV treatment outcomes and may be less likely to achieve durable viral suppression. We characterized transitions in and out of viral suppression from 1997-2017 in a long-standing community-based cohort of PWID (AIDS Linked to the IntraVenous Experience (ALIVE)) among HIV+ participants with a study...

Neighbourhood change is a complex phenomenon. To study its consequences for health outcomes, we developed a measure of neighbourhood social and economic change for all census tracts ( n = 2272) in the entire city of Madrid (Spain) in two epochs (2005–2009 and 2009–2013). We used a finite mixture modelling approach with 16 indicators from several ad...

Background & aims: We evaluated the impact of integrating HCV testing/education into integrated care centers (ICCs) delivering HIV services to people who inject drugs (PWID) across India using a cluster-randomized trial. Methods: We compared ICCs with usual care (UC) in the PWID stratum (12 sites) of a 22-site cluster-randomized trial. In 6 site...

The Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, is one of the largest annual mass gatherings in the world, and has a strong impact on international public health. This paper presents an overview from a systematic search of the published literature on health risks and services in the Hajj for 2005-2014, with the aim of providing health policy recommenda...

One in five transgender women (TW) are living with HIV, yet little has been published about their health outcomes. We analyzed data from TW (n = 37), cisgender women (CW, n = 165), and cisgender men who have sex with men (MSM, n = 151) in Thailand and Brazil. We hypothesized: (1) TW will have higher odds of depressive symptoms, lower odds of condom...

Increasing overdose mortality and new HIV outbreaks in the U.S. highlight the need to identify risk behavior profiles among people who inject drugs (PWID). We characterized latent classes of drug use among a community-based sample of 671 PWID in Baltimore during 2017 and evaluated associations of these classes with sharing syringes, obtaining syrin...

We studied the association between neighborhood social and economic change and type 2 diabetes incidence in the city of Madrid (Spain). We followed 199,621 individuals living in 393 census tracts for diabetes incidence for 6 years using electronic health records, starting in 2009. We measured neighborhood social and economic change from 2005 to 200...

Recent research has implicated economic insecurity in increasing midlife death rates and "deaths of despair," including suicide, chronic liver disease, and drug and alcohol poisoning. In this ecological longitudinal study, we evaluated the association between changes in economic insecurity and increases in deaths of despair and midlife all-cause mo...

Background: To achieve reductions in HIV incidence, we need strategies to engage key population at risk for HIV in low-income and middle-income countries. We evaluated the effectiveness of integrated care centres in India that provided single-venue HIV testing, prevention, and treatment services for people who inject drugs (PWID) and men who have...

Background: Little is known about the impact of psychosocial factors and substance use on viral suppression among key populations in resource-limited settings. Accordingly, we examined the association and interactions between depression, alcohol use and recreational drug use on viral suppression among men who have sex with men (MSM) and people who...

Introduction Prescription drug abuse is a major public health problem in rural and suburban areas of the United States, however its emergence in large urban settings with endemic injection drug use remains understudied. We examined temporal trends in injection drug use initiation and mortality among people who inject drugs (PWID) in Baltimore, Mary...

Background There is a paucity of data on factors associated with viral suppression in representative populations of HIV-positive MSM in low-middle income country (LMIC) settings. We characterized factors associated with viral suppression among a community-recruited sample of MSM across India with a particular focus on depression, alcohol use and re...

Background: Use of methamphetamines (MA) and other stimulants have consistently been associated with HIV/STI risk globally. We evaluated a community mobilization intervention (Connect to Protect, C2P®) to prevent MA use among youth and reduce HIV risk behaviors through community structural changes. Design: A community-randomized trial in norther...

Background: In some regions, HIV incidence is rising among people who inject drugs (PWID). Combination prevention approaches are well suited to PWID who face multiple sources of HIV risk. This analysis investigates patterns of utilisation to basic HIV services (HIV counselling and testing [HCT], antiretroviral therapy [ART]) as well as harm reduct...

This study explores the association between neighborhood social and economic change from 2009 to 2013 and changes in the retail food environment from 2013 to 2017 in Madrid (Spain). We classified neighborhoods into four types: decreasing SES, new housing/gentrifying, increasing SES, and aging (population and housing). Food store data was obtained f...

Syndemic theory describes the clustering and synergistic interaction of disease driven by contextual and social factors, which worsen health outcomes for a population, and has been applied to men who have sex with men (MSM) and their risk for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. Recent reviews, however, have critiqued prevailing approache...

Background: Physical activity has established health benefits, but motivation and adherence remain challenging. Objective: We designed and launched a three-arm randomized trial to test artificial intelligence technology solutions to increase daily physical activity in cancer survivors. Methods: A single-center, three-arm randomized clinical tr...

Youth represent a large proportion of new HIV infections worldwide, yet their utilization of HIV testing and counseling (HTC) remains low. Using the post-intervention, cross-sectional, population-based household survey done in 2011 as part of HPTN 043/NIMH Project Accept, a cluster-randomized trial of community mobilization and mobile HTC in South...