The objective of this study was to identify longitudinal patterns of injection drug use over 20 years in the AIDS Linked to the Intravenous Experience (ALIVE) Study, a community-based cohort of injection drug users (IDUs) in Baltimore, Maryland, with a focus on injection cessation. Starting in 1988, persons over 18 years of age with a history of injection drug use were recruited into the study....

Both random walk and respondent-driven sampling (RDS) exploit social networks and may reduce biases introduced by earlier methods for sampling from hidden populations. Although RDS has become much more widely used by social researchers than random walk (RW), there has been little discussion of the tradeoffs in choosing RDS over RW. This paper compares experiences of implementing RW and RDS to r...

AIMS To examine the effect of a needle exchange program (NEP) on incidence of injection cessation and change in injection frequency; to explore predictors for injection cessation and change in injection frequency; and to assess whether injection quitters transitioned to non-injected drug use. DESIGN AND SETTING Between 1997 and 2002, 901 injection drug users (IDUs) were recruited from an NEP ...

Harm reduction has been increasingly finding its way into public drug policies and healthcare practices worldwide, with successful intervention measures justifiably focussing on the highest-risk groups, such as injecting drug users. However, there are also other types of drug users in need for harm reduction, even though they pose less, low, or no public health risk. Occasionally, drug users ma...

The following excerpt is from our Elder Abuse tutorial on the ANMF's Aged Care Training Room (ACTR). Subtopics covered include defining elder abuse, legalities, contributing factors, indicators of elder abuse, organisational issues, characteristics of the abused resident/client and their abuser, worker characteristics, prevention and compulsory reporting to name but a few.

The case of a 29-year-old former parenteral drug abuser who presented with a 3rd nerve palsy and contralateral ataxia is reported. The patient was found to have a positive HLTV-III titer and acquired immune deficiency syndrome was diagnosed. Computed tomography demonstrated two ring-enhancing lesions in the brain which were presumed to be due to Toxoplasma gondii.

Zolpidem is a short-acting imidazopyridine hypnotic that is an agonist at the gamma-aminobutyric acid A type (GABAA) receptor. It has been suggested that it acts selectively on alpha1 subunit-containing GABAA benzodiazepine (BZ1) receptors presenting (contrary to classic benzodiazepines) low or no affinity for other subtypes. Therefore, it has been proposed that it lacks the benzodiazepines-lik...