Changing age profile and incidence of injecting drug use initiation among people in Australia who inject drugs: evidence from two national repeated cross-sectional studies.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The age of people who inject drugs appears to be increasing in some high-income countries. We aimed to explore trends in the age of people injecting and recently starting to inject drugs in Australia, and to model incidence of initiation over time.

Methods

We obtained data from the Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) and the Australian Needle Syringe Program Survey (ANSPS), which comprise annual cross-sectional surveys with people who inject drugs (2000-2019). Outcome measures were current age, age of initiation, and time since initiation (both surveys), and drug first injected (IDRS only). We estimated time trends in age using quantile regression. We used the relative number of people initiating injecting drug use each year and existing population size estimates

SUBMITTER: Price O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12036076 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature