Increasing prevalence of HIV infection among first time clients in Italian drug treatment services – is it sexual transmission?

Table 1 Prevalence of HIV and HCV infection among clients registered in Drug addiction services in Italy

	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011^§
HIV prevalence:
Overall* (tested)	14.7 (65,848)	13.5 (67,300)	13.1 (68,032)	12.9 (64,021)	12.0 (60,057)	13.8 (58,408)	11.1 (45,663)
- new clients* (tested)	3.8 (11,562)	4.4 (11,520)	3.7 (12,165)	2.9 (11,214)	2.2 (9,821)	4.7 (9,860)	5.3 (7,154)
HCV prevalence:
Overall** (tested)	61.6 (75,354)	62.4 (78,212)	61.1 (80,366)	59.7 (74,631)	59.4 (71,777)	61.9 (74,374)	50.0 (56,227)
- new clients** (tested)	31.8 (11,739)	31.3 (11,371)	30.7 (12,475)	26.4 (11,718)	25.3 (10,591)	27.9 (10,190)	21.6 (8,462)
Sample size (No. subjects in drug treatment services)	162,005	171,353	172,303	167,674	168,364	174,156	172,211

*p < 0.0001 by χ² for trends, showing a decrease of prevalence of HIV infection in the overall population, and an increase of prevalence of HIV infection among subjects entering Drug addiction services for the first time.
**p < 0.0001 by χ² for trends, showing a decrease of prevalence of HCV infection in all categories of subjects.
^§For the year 2011 data are incomplete, since some centres provided only anagraphic data; 172,211 clients entered drug treatment in 2011, but data on HIV and HCV screening test were available from 138,475 subjects only. Due to the high percentage of missing data we used the “inverse probability weight” method.

ISSN: 1471-2334