BACKGROUND Loneliness is one of the psychological variables related to high risk behaviors that should be investigated more. OBJECTIVES The current study aimed to assess emotional, social, romantic, and familial dimensions of loneliness in drug abuser and nondrug abuser individuals. PATIENTS AND METHODS Two hundred and twenty eight individuals were enrolled in this cross sectional study. Hu...

OBJECTIVES Research has indicated that there is minimal use of pharmacies among injection drug users (IDUs) in specific neighborhoods and among Black and Hispanic IDUs. We developed a community-based participatory research partnership to determine whether a multilevel intervention would increase sterile syringe access through a new policy allowing nonprescription syringe sales in pharmacies. ...

BACKGROUND Despite the implementation of harm reduction program, some injecting drug users (IDU) continue to engage in high-risk behaviors. It seems that there are some social factors that contribute to risk of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission in IDUs. The aim of this study was to analysis the social network of IDUs and examines the effect of network location on HIV transmission ...

OBJECTIVES The objectives of this study were to estimate the cost-effectiveness of a harm reduction intervention among injecting drug users (IDUs) in Odessa, Ukraine; and to explore how the cost-effectiveness changes if the intervention were scaled up to 60% as recommended by WHO/UNAIDS. STUDY DESIGN Economic providers' costs were estimated. A dynamic mathematical model, fitted to epidemiolog...

Male-to-male sex and illicit injection drug use are important transmission routes for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. Of all new HIV infections in 2010, 80% were among men, of which 78% were among men who have sex with men (MSM), 6% among male injection drug users (IDU), and 4% among men who have sex with men and inject drugs (MSM/IDU). MSM/IDU might have different prevention need...

OBJECTIVE To establish the prevalence of injecting practices that carry a risk of HIV infection among injection drug users (IDUs) in Indonesia and to examine the risk of sexual transmission of HIV from IDUs to noninjecting populations. DESIGN A first round of behavioral surveillance among community-recruited male IDUs in 3 cities. METHODS In late 2002, IDU gathering places were mapped in 3 ...

BACKGROUND Illicit drug use has become an increasing public health and social concern in the past decades worldwide. Intravenous injection has an elevated risk of infection. Needle embolism is a rare complication of intravenous drug users, Retained broken needles can lead to local complications, such as infection, but they also have the potential to embolize to heart or lung, and lead to seriou...

BACKGROUND We utilized multiple recruitment approaches to recruit IDUs in a longitudinal cohort study to examine HIV incidence and behavior change pre- and post-introduction of comprehensive HIV prevention services. METHODS IDUs were recruited through peer referral, targeted outreach by outreach workers (ORWs) and as walk-in clients at drop-in centers. Participants received monetary compensat...

In various settings, drug market policing strategies have been found to have unintended negative effects on health service use among injection drug users (IDU). This has prompted calls for more effective coordination of policing and public health efforts. In Vancouver, Canada, a supervised injection facility (SIF) was established in 2003. We sought to determine if local police impacted utilizat...