Increasing HIV Testing Among Sexual and Gender Expansive Men in Kazakhstan: A Stepped-Wedge Randomized Trial of a Community-Level Intervention.

Importance: HIV transmission in Kazakhstan has increased among men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender and nonbinary people who have sex with men (TSM), driven by low HIV testing rates.

Objective: To determine if the intervention had a community effect of increasing HIV testing among MSM and TSM in Kazakhstan.

Design: We employed a stepped-wedge, cluster-randomized controlled trial with MSM and TSM community members recruited from three cities in Kazakhstan: Almaty, Astana, and Shymkent.

Scaling Up HIV Self-Testing and Linkage to Care Among Women Who Exchange Sex and/or Use Drugs in Kazakhstan.

HIV testing is the point of entry for linkage to treatment and prevention and is critically important to ending the HIV epidemic. HIV self-testing (HST) is an acceptable, user-controlled tool that can address testing barriers, which is especially important for populations who need to test frequently, like women who exchange or trade sex for money or other needed resources (WES) and women who use drugs. HST is feasible and acceptable among WES, but research among WES who also use drugs is limited, particularly in places like Kazakhstan, where HIV rates remain high and where scale-up of HST and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is in process.

Study of the possibility of introduction of Kazakhstan NGO-based rapid HIV testing procedures.

Introduction: New initiatives presented by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS , such as 90-90-90, test and treat, preventive treatment, and best international practices related to the introduction of rapid human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing in clinics, and field conditions, including self-testing, predetermined the introduction of NGO-based rapid HIV testing in the Republic of Kazakhstan nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). This work presents the results of a comprehensive study conducted about the possible introduction of NGO-based rapid HIV testing in the country. It should be noted that 32,573 HIV infections have been diagnosed in Kazakhstan (prevalence of 117.

[Ultrastructural characteristics of Actinomyces olivaceus in the process of development of a culture as related to lipid synthesis].

The cytomorphology of an Actinomyces olivaceus culture was studied, in the course of its submerged cultivation in two media differing in phosphate content, in relation to lipid biosynthesis. The cells (including those grown under the conditions of phosphate deficiency in the medium) have well-developed membranous apparatus, particularly during the exponential growth phase and in the transition to the stationary phase whose time depends on the composition of the medium. No visible defects were found in the membranous apparatus of cells grown under the conditions of phosphate deficiency; the lipid component of these cells contained ornithinolipid instead of phosphatidyl ethanolamine.

[Lipoamino acids in the composition of actinomycete polar lipids].

The capacity for substitution of phospholipids, in particular phosphatidyl ethanolamine, by a phosphorus-lacking lipoamino acid was studied in different groups of actinomycetes. In the conditions of phosphorus deficiency, most cultures were found to be capable of synthesizing a phosphorus-lacking nitrogen-containing lipoamino acid. Its characteristics (Rf) in TLC are similar to those of ornithinolipid.