AIDSWEEKLY Plus, 23 September 1996
Daniel J. DeNoon, Senior Editor

Among intravenous drug users (IDUs) in Bangkok, Thailand, HIV incidence is 10 percent per year. Some 8,000 of these individuals are currently enrolled in drug-treatment centers managed by the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA).

"Willingness to participate in a prospective cohort study is high among the HIV negative IDUs treated at the BMA," said Dwip Kitayaporn of Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand.

Kitayaporn spoke during a presentation to the XI International Conference on AIDS, held July 7-12, 1996, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

In collaboration with CDC researcher T.D. Mastro, D.C. Jarlais of Beth Israel Medical Center, New York, and W.L. Heyward of the UNAIDS program, Geneva, Switzerland, Kitayaporn and colleagues screened IDUs at 1,674 15 BMA clinics.

Nearly all of the IDUs were male (95 percent), 60 percent were not married, 55 percent had more than six years of education, 70 percent were employed, and 83 percent were in a methadone program. The mean age of the cohort was 31 years.

HIV prevalence in the group was 29.3 percent. Clade B isolates accounted for 65 percent of the infections and clade E isolates accounted for 35 percent.

"Despite ongoing interventions, HIV prevalence and risk are high among this large, relatively homogeneous population of IDUs in treatment," Kitayaporn said.

Logistic regression analysis showed that HIV positivity was most likely in cohort members who had been incarcerated in the previous six months (OR=2.1). Risk of HIV infection increased with each year of age over 31 years.

Of the 822 HIV negative cohort members, 82.5 percent said they would participate in clinical trials of candidate HIV vaccines.

"Willingness to participate in a prospective cohort study is high among the HIV negative IDUs treated at the BMA," Kitayaporn said. "We have enrolled 500 HIV negative IDUs into a cohort study to determine rates of successful follow-up and HIV incidence, and to characterize infecting HIV strains."

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