Despitevery similar political, drug policy and HIV prevention backgrounds, HIV and HCV prevalence is considerably different in Hungary (low HIV and moderate HCV prevalence) and Lithuania (high HCV and moderate HIV prevalence). Wecompared the drug use profile of Hungarian (n = 215) and Lithuanian (n = 300) injecting drug users (IDUs). Overall, compared with IDUs in Hungary, IDUs in Lithuania oft...

BACKGROUND Nurses at The Norwegian Radium Hospital have reported that some patients notice an unpleasant smell or taste in accordance with flushing of intravenous lines with commercially available prefilled syringes. We have conducted a study in healthy volunteers to investigate the occurrence, consistency and intensity of this phenomenon. METHODS A randomised, blinded, crossover study compar...

Injection drug users (IDUs) in San Juan, Puerto Rico are characterized by high rates of daily injecting, injection of shared drugs, re-use of injection syringes, and use of shooting galleries. They lack adequate access to new injection syringes and drug preparation equipment, and experience elevated rates of HIV and HCV infection. Between April and August, 2006, researchers and active IDUs coll...

BACKGROUND HIV prevalence is high in Liangshan, China (1.1 %). In 2012, people who inject drugs (PWID) in Xichang, the capital city, contributed to 60.0 % of the HIV infections. The goal of the current study was to examine the feasibility of implementing pharmacy-delivered harm reduction services (PDHRS) for PWID. METHODS Face-to-face structured interviews with 403 PWID included questions on ...

INTRODUCTION AND AIMS Thailand's longstanding HIV epidemic among injection drug users (IDU) has been attributed, in part, to the Thai government's unwillingness to implement evidence-based HIV prevention interventions. This study was undertaken to examine risk factors for syringe borrowing among a community-recruited sample of Thai IDU. DESIGN AND METHODS We examined the prevalence of syringe...