Government and health care services are being urged to make special help available for young people who inject drugs, in a bid to minimize drug-related deaths. In a newly-published study of causes of death amongst a group of injecting drug users in Edinburgh since the early 1980s,
University of Edinburgh researchers now show conclusively that harm minimisation strategies like needle and syringe exchange schemes have been effective in saving lives from
HIV/AIDS and hepatitis. The findings are revealed in the current edition of the
Archives of Internal Medicine.
Researchers looked at all patients who had ever injected drugs, in a large family practice of 10,000 patients in Edinburgh, from 1980 until 2001. There was a well-described epidemic of HIV, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C in Edinburgh between 1982 and 1984, as fictionalised in the film Trainspotting, but since then, the transmission of HIV has been minimal amongst the drug-injecting population. The main cause of death in the early years of the 21-year study was drug overdose, followed by HIV/AIDS in later years. Hepatitis C claimed most lives towards the end of the study period. These death rates reflect the changed patterns of damaging injecting which took place from the mid to late 1980s onwards, as public health measures like needle exchange schemes and methadone prescribing took effect.