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Hepatitis C among noninjecting drug users: a report
S Tortu1, A Neaigus, J McMahon
1Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Department of Community Health Sciences, New Orleans, Louisiana 70112, USA. stortu@tulane.edu
Objectives:
This report documents the prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection among self-reported noninjecting drug users recruited from two New York City neighborhoods.
Methods:
Participants were recruited in separate studies from East Harlem and the Lower East Side of Manhattan and were administered structured questionnaires and tested for HCV.
Results:
HCV prevalence rates among those reporting no history of injecting drugs ranged from 5% to 29%, according to age, gender, and study location.
Conclusions:
Our results suggest that more research is needed to elucidate potential noninjecting routes of HCV transmission among drug users. Moreover, policies that rely predominantly on injector status as the only drug-related risk factor for HCV screening need to be reassessed in light of these findings.