Prevalence of HIV and Injection Drug Use

"In 2010, 13 persons newly diagnosed with HIV, reported intravenous drug use as the probable mode of HIV transmission, yielding a percentage of 1.5% (95% CI:0.71%-2.3%) of the persons newly diagnosed with HIV being probably attributable to injecting drug use. As a result of reporting delay, no new AIDS diagnoses related to injecting drug use were reported for 2010, so far. The percentage of IDUs among persons newly diagnosed with HIV were much lower compared to the beginning of the HIV epidemic in the mid eighties as can be seen from Figure 6.1. No clear time trends were observed regarding the proportion of IDUs among the newly diagnosed AIDS cases. However, with exception of the onset of the HIV-epidemic, the proportion of IDUs among AIDS-cases was found to be systematically (although not significantly) higher than the proportion of IDUs among the HIV-cases, indicating that IDUs are more rapidly developing AIDS compared to non-IDUs. It is hypothesized that this is due to the higher hepatitis co-infection rate among IDUs compared to non-IDUs and/or due to differences in treatment compliance."