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Differences in the social networks of ethnic Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese injecting drug users and their implications for blood-borne virus transmission.

Aitken CK, Higgs P, Bowden S

Epidemiology and Social Research Program, Macfarlane Burnet Institute for Medical Research and Public Health, Melbourne, Australia. aitken@burnet.edu.au

The social networks of 49 ethnic Vietnamese injecting drug users (IDUs) and 150 IDUs of other ethnicities recruited in Melbourne, Australia, were examined for ethnic differences in distribution of hepatitis C virus infection risk using social network analysis and molecular epidemiology. Vietnamese IDUs were more highly connected than non-Vietnamese IDUs, and more likely to be members of dense injecting sub-networks. More related infections were detected in IDUs with discordant ethnicities than were captured in the social network data; nonetheless, most dyads and most IDU pairs with related infections had matching ethnicity, confirming that mixing was assortative on that criterion. Mixing was not obviously dissortative by risk; low-risk Vietnamese IDUs injected more frequently than did correspondingly low-risk non-Vietnamese IDUs, but results for other measures were reversed or equivocal. Network measurements suggest that ethnic Vietnamese IDUs are at elevated risk of blood-borne infection, a conclusion supported by their relatively high HIV prevalence.

Published 4 February 2008 in Epidemiol Infect, 136(3): 410-6.
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