RESEARCH ARTICLE
Seroepidemiology and Risk Factors Of Blood-Borne Virus Infections Among Drug Users in Uppsala County, Sweden
Staffan P.E. Sylvan*, 1, Johan Hedlund1, Gunilla Ohlén1, Eva Lundell2, Kare Bondeson3, the Uppsala County Working Group Against Drug Dependency
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2008Volume: 2
First Page: 27
Last Page: 31
Publisher Id: TOIDJ-2-27
DOI: 10.2174/1874279300802010027
Article History:
Received Date: 01/08/2008Revision Received Date: 29/08/2008
Acceptance Date: 02/09/2008
Electronic publication date: 7/10/2008
Collection year: 2008
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The prevalence, risk factors, and prevention opportunities of hepatitis A, B, C and HIV infection was studied in injecting drug users (IDUs) in comparison with non-injecting drug users (n-IDUs) in Uppsala County, Sweden.
The seroprevalence among IDUs were 0.7% for HIV, 19% for HAV, 26% for HBV and 63% for HCV. For hepatitis C, the seroprevalence was directly related to the number of years of injections. No cases of HIV were found among the n- IDUs and the seroprevalence rate was significantly lower for HBV and HCV, 6 and 2%, respectively. In contrast, the anti- HAV antibody seroprevalence was not significantly different between n-IDUs and IDUs (27% vs 19%, p< ns). There was no difference in vaccination uptake among IDUs compared with n-IDUs.
Hepatitis A and B vaccination should be considered as one component of a comprehensive programme including counselling, support and education of blood-borne infections associated with drug use.