Sexual risk behaviors and STDs among persons who inject drugs: A national study

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Prev Med
• Personal Author:
  Brookmeyer, Kathryn A. ; Haderxhanaj, Laura T. ; Hogben, Matthew ; Leichliter, Jami
• Description:
  Opioid use and the rising case reports of STDs represent co-occurring epidemics; research indicates that persons who inject drugs (PWID) may be at increased risk for acquiring STDs. We use the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG, 2011-2015) to examine the prevalence of risky sexual behaviors and STD diagnoses among PWID. We describe demographic characteristics, sexual behaviors, and self-reported STD diagnoses of sexually active women and men, separately, by whether they had ever engaged in injection-related behaviors (age 15-44; N = 9006 women, N = 7210 men). Results indicate that in 2011-15, 1.4% of women and 2.6% of men reported ever engaging in injection-related behaviors. Examining the full logistic regression models indicate that for women, sex with a PWID in the past 12 months (AOR = 5.8, 95% CI: 2.9, 11.7), exchanging money/drugs for sex in the past 12 months (AOR = 3.6, 95% CI: 1.2, 10.9), chlamydia and/or gonorrhea diagnosis in the past 12 months (AOR = 2.6, 95% CI: 1.2, 5.3), ever having a syphilis diagnosis (AOR = 8.5, 95% CI: 3.1, 23.4), and ever having a herpes diagnosis (AOR = 3.3, 95% CI: 1.0, 10.3) were associated with increased odds of engaging in injection-related behaviors. For men, sex with a PWID in the past 12 months (AOR = 10.9, 95% CI: 4.3, 27.7), ever being diagnosed with syphilis (AOR = 5.8, 95% CI: 1.8, 18.0), and ever being diagnosed with herpes (AOR = 2.7, 95% CI: 1.0, 7.1) were significantly associated with increased odds of engaging in injection-related behaviors. Future research may examine critical intervention points, including co-occurring factors in both STD acquisition and injection drug use.
• Subjects:
  Adolescent Adult Cross-Sectional Studies Female Humans Male Opioid-Related Disorders Risk-Taking Sex Distribution Sexual Behavior Sexually Transmitted Diseases Substance Abuse, Intravenous Young Adult

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• Keywords:
  Chlamydia/Gonorrhea Injection Drug Use Nationally Representative Data Opioids Sexual Risk Behavior STDs Syphilis
• Source:
  Prev Med. 126:105779
• Pubmed ID:
  31319117
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC6816039
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  CC999999/ImCDC/Intramural CDC HHSUnited States/
• Place as Subject:
  United States
• Volume:
  126
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:7e22e7cbd9633d111632d2c5b2ba8bf98308e07701893bf086cb5606c16a08c0
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/83035/cdc_83035_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 113.28 KB ]