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New hepatitis C virus infection, re-infection and associated risk behaviour in male Irish prisoners: a cohort study, 2019

BACKGROUND: Prisoners are recognised as a high-risk population and prisons as high-risk locations for the transmission of hepatitis c virus (HCV) infection. Injecting drug use (IDU) is the main driver of HCV infection in prisoners and harm reduction services are often suboptimal in prison settings....

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Autores principales: Crowley, Des, Avramovic, Gordana, Cullen, Walter, Farrell, Collette, Halpin, Anne, Keevans, Mary, Laird, Eamon, McHugh, Tina, McKiernan, Susan, Miggin, Sarah Jayne, Murtagh, Ross, Connor, Eileen O., O’Meara, Marie, Reilly, Deirdre O., Lambert, John S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8186141/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34103080
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13690-021-00623-2
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author Crowley, Des
Avramovic, Gordana
Cullen, Walter
Farrell, Collette
Halpin, Anne
Keevans, Mary
Laird, Eamon
McHugh, Tina
McKiernan, Susan
Miggin, Sarah Jayne
Murtagh, Ross
Connor, Eileen O.
O’Meara, Marie
Reilly, Deirdre O.
Lambert, John S.
author_facet Crowley, Des
Avramovic, Gordana
Cullen, Walter
Farrell, Collette
Halpin, Anne
Keevans, Mary
Laird, Eamon
McHugh, Tina
McKiernan, Susan
Miggin, Sarah Jayne
Murtagh, Ross
Connor, Eileen O.
O’Meara, Marie
Reilly, Deirdre O.
Lambert, John S.
author_sort Crowley, Des
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Prisoners are recognised as a high-risk population and prisons as high-risk locations for the transmission of hepatitis c virus (HCV) infection. Injecting drug use (IDU) is the main driver of HCV infection in prisoners and harm reduction services are often suboptimal in prison settings. HCV prevalence and incident data in prisoners is incomplete which impacts the public health opportunity that incarceration provides in identifying, treating and preventing HCV infection. The aim of this study is to identify new HCV infection and associated risk factors in an Irish male prison. METHODS: We conducted a follow up (18-month) cohort study on prisoners who had previously tested negative, self-cleared or had been successfully treated for HCV infection. We conducted the study in a male medium security prison located in Dublin Ireland (Mountjoy Prison) using HCV serology, a review of medical records and a researcher-administered questionnaire. RESULTS: 99 prisoners with a mean age of 33.2 yrs. participated in the study and 82(82.8%) completed a research-administered questionnaire. Over half (51%) had a history of drug use from a young age (14.8 yrs.), 49.9% a history of heroin use and 39% a history of IDU. The prevalence of HIV and hepatitis B virus core antibody was 3% and HCV antibody was 22.2%. No new HCV infections were identified in those who had never been infected (n = 77), had self-cleared (n = 9) or achieved sustained virological response (n = 12). Small numbers of prisoners continued to engage in risk-behaviour including, IDU both in the prison (n = 2) and the community (n = 3), sharing syringes (n = 1) and drug taking paraphernalia (n = 6) and receiving non-sterile tattoos (n = 3). CONCLUSION: Despite the high numbers of Irish prisoners with a history of IDU and HCV infection, new HCV infection is low or non-existent in this population. Small numbers of prisoners continue to engage in risk behaviour and larger studies are required to further understand HCV transmission in this cohort in an Irish and international context.
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spelling pubmed-81861412021-06-10 New hepatitis C virus infection, re-infection and associated risk behaviour in male Irish prisoners: a cohort study, 2019 Crowley, Des Avramovic, Gordana Cullen, Walter Farrell, Collette Halpin, Anne Keevans, Mary Laird, Eamon McHugh, Tina McKiernan, Susan Miggin, Sarah Jayne Murtagh, Ross Connor, Eileen O. O’Meara, Marie Reilly, Deirdre O. Lambert, John S. Arch Public Health Research BACKGROUND: Prisoners are recognised as a high-risk population and prisons as high-risk locations for the transmission of hepatitis c virus (HCV) infection. Injecting drug use (IDU) is the main driver of HCV infection in prisoners and harm reduction services are often suboptimal in prison settings. HCV prevalence and incident data in prisoners is incomplete which impacts the public health opportunity that incarceration provides in identifying, treating and preventing HCV infection. The aim of this study is to identify new HCV infection and associated risk factors in an Irish male prison. METHODS: We conducted a follow up (18-month) cohort study on prisoners who had previously tested negative, self-cleared or had been successfully treated for HCV infection. We conducted the study in a male medium security prison located in Dublin Ireland (Mountjoy Prison) using HCV serology, a review of medical records and a researcher-administered questionnaire. RESULTS: 99 prisoners with a mean age of 33.2 yrs. participated in the study and 82(82.8%) completed a research-administered questionnaire. Over half (51%) had a history of drug use from a young age (14.8 yrs.), 49.9% a history of heroin use and 39% a history of IDU. The prevalence of HIV and hepatitis B virus core antibody was 3% and HCV antibody was 22.2%. No new HCV infections were identified in those who had never been infected (n = 77), had self-cleared (n = 9) or achieved sustained virological response (n = 12). Small numbers of prisoners continued to engage in risk-behaviour including, IDU both in the prison (n = 2) and the community (n = 3), sharing syringes (n = 1) and drug taking paraphernalia (n = 6) and receiving non-sterile tattoos (n = 3). CONCLUSION: Despite the high numbers of Irish prisoners with a history of IDU and HCV infection, new HCV infection is low or non-existent in this population. Small numbers of prisoners continue to engage in risk behaviour and larger studies are required to further understand HCV transmission in this cohort in an Irish and international context. BioMed Central 2021-06-08 /pmc/articles/PMC8186141/ /pubmed/34103080 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13690-021-00623-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Crowley, Des
Avramovic, Gordana
Cullen, Walter
Farrell, Collette
Halpin, Anne
Keevans, Mary
Laird, Eamon
McHugh, Tina
McKiernan, Susan
Miggin, Sarah Jayne
Murtagh, Ross
Connor, Eileen O.
O’Meara, Marie
Reilly, Deirdre O.
Lambert, John S.
New hepatitis C virus infection, re-infection and associated risk behaviour in male Irish prisoners: a cohort study, 2019
title New hepatitis C virus infection, re-infection and associated risk behaviour in male Irish prisoners: a cohort study, 2019
title_full New hepatitis C virus infection, re-infection and associated risk behaviour in male Irish prisoners: a cohort study, 2019
title_fullStr New hepatitis C virus infection, re-infection and associated risk behaviour in male Irish prisoners: a cohort study, 2019
title_full_unstemmed New hepatitis C virus infection, re-infection and associated risk behaviour in male Irish prisoners: a cohort study, 2019
title_short New hepatitis C virus infection, re-infection and associated risk behaviour in male Irish prisoners: a cohort study, 2019
title_sort new hepatitis c virus infection, re-infection and associated risk behaviour in male irish prisoners: a cohort study, 2019
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8186141/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34103080
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13690-021-00623-2
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