Prevalence of HIV infection among intravenous drug addicts in Shiraz, 1998

Drug addicts, especially those practicing injection, are regarded as a major high-risk group for HIV infection. This study was performed to determine the burden of infection in 1061 drug addicts residing in the rehabilitational camp of Shiraz. In 1998, a survey in 1061 randomly selected drug abuse residing in the rehabilitational camp of Shiraz were performed in which demographic and other required data were collected using a questionnaire and samples from each subject were tested for anti-HIV by ELISA-II and then western blot. Overall, 0.76% of subjects were positive for anti-HIV detected by ELISA-II, 1.2% among intravenous and 0.33% among non-intravenous drug abusers, which, being several hundred times more than the prevalence in the general population. Points to the fact that drug addicts must be regarded very high-risk irrespective of their principle method of drug use. The high prevalence among non-intravenous addicts also may be indicative of the possibility that they have practiced high-risk injection sometimes during the period of addiction or imprisonment. Due to the low number of positive cases, no relation could be established between the age, duration and method of drug abuse, history of imprisonment, job, tattooing, marital status and HIV infection. Authors recommend widespread education of the community and drug abuser population in order to reduce the prevalence and spread of infection in addicts an the society, active case-finding among drug abusers, particularly before their referral to rehabilitational centers and developing control measures along with educational program to prevent the residents of these centers from access to drugs and practice of high-risk methods such as needle-sharing.