Drug addicts and syringe sharing in France: epidemiological study 1988

A cross-sectional study was carried out in France in March 1988 to measure the impact made on drug abusers by educational campaigns concerning HIV transmission and the lifting of restrictions on the sale of syringes. Thirty-two drug-dependence centers provided a sample of 479 subjects who, compared with 4,846 subjects enrolled in 1986, were found to differ particularly in the type of substance used. Since no observations were made before the introduction of the preventive measures, the changes cannot be attributed to these alone. However, mean profiles were obtained by comparing the different groups, the results obtained remaining dependent on the method of recruitment (specialized centers) and the retrospective nature of the data.