[Change in the drugs administration pattern in the Basque Country Community. The 1991-1996 trend]

A reduction of intravenous route as a method of consuming drugs and a change towards to the use of less morbid routes has taken place in the last years in national and international contexts. Our objective was to examine change trends in the drugs administration route in the Basque Country Community and to explore factors associated with the injected route (IR) use.

A time-based series of cross-sectional studies using data provided by the Information System on Drug Abuse (SIT) of the Basque Government was used. A total of 12,382 admissions to treatment produced between the years 1991 to 1996 was analyzed. For the analysis of trends linearity test was play and for the estimation of the association between explanatory variables and outcome variable logistic regression model was carried out.

A significative change in the route of drugs administration (chi 2 = 621.3; p < 0.001) is evidence, having decreased the prevalence of IR use from 83% 1991 to 52.3% in 1996. The adjusted regression model (-2LL = 10,766.7) reveals the age of the drugs users as a protective variable (OR = 0.94; IC95% = 0.93 to 0.95). On the contrary, being man (OR = 1.25; IC95% = 1.11 to 1.39), having received previous treatments (OR = 2.63; IC95% = 2.38 to 2.90), being heroine the drug that motivates the demand for treatment (OR = 9.41; IC95% = 7.24 to 12.2), and the greater number of consumption years (OR = 1.14; IC95% = 1.13 to 1.16), are presented as factors associated with a greater utilization of the Injected Route.

Even though it has been observed a reduction of the use of the injected route over the years, a prevalence of the 52.3% in 1996 continues being too high. It is discussed the need of persisting in the application of harm reduction and risks prevention strategies.