ArticleBMC public health2017
Estimating the number of people who inject drugs in Australia.
Article in BMC public health, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 56 citations in OpenAlex.
- Trends in Opioid Agonist Treatment for Opioid Dependence During Pregnancy: A Population-Based Study in New South Wales 2005-2021.Drug and alcohol review · 2026Article
- Postpartum retention in opioid agonist treatment for opioid dependence: A population-based cohort study.Archives of women's mental health · 2026Article
- 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.The Lancet regional health. Western Pacific · 2025Article
- Prioritising people who use drugs in health policy: An Australian Capital Territory case study.Drug and alcohol review · 2025Article
- Phenotyping people with a history of injecting drug use within electronic medical records using an interactive machine learning approach.NPJ digital medicine · 2024Article
- The burden of skin and soft tissue, bone and joint infections in an Australian cohort of people who inject drugs.BMC infectious diseases · 2024Article
- "No-one just does drugs during business hours!": evaluation of a 24/7 primary needle and syringe program in St Kilda, Australia.Harm reduction journal · 2024Article
- Scale-up of Direct-Acting Antiviral Treatment in Prisons Is Both Cost-effective and Key to Hepatitis C Virus Elimination.Open forum infectious diseases · 2024Article
- Epidemiology of acute infections in people who inject drugs in Australia.Drug and alcohol review · 2024Review
- Analysis of four syringe dispensing machine point-of-access data 2017-2020 in Melbourne, Australia: machine utilisation and client demographics.Harm reduction journal · 2022Article
- Article
- Modeling the population-level impact of opioid agonist treatment on mortality among people accessing treatment between 2001 and 2020 in New South Wales, Australia.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2022Article
- Harm Minimisation Drug Policy Implementation Qualities: Their Efficacy with Australian Needle and Syringe Program Providers and People Who Inject Drugs.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- The Economic Burden of Infective Endocarditis due to Injection Drug Use in Australia: A Single Centre Study-University Hospital Geelong, Barwon Health, Victoria.Interdisciplinary perspectives on infectious diseases · 2022Article
- Mapping and population size estimates of people who inject drugs in Afghanistan in 2019: Synthesis of multiple methods.PloS one · 2022Article
- Estimates of people who injected drugs within the last 12 months in Belgium based on a capture-recapture and multiplier method.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2021Article
- Estimating the prevalence of problem drug use from drug-related mortality data.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2020Article
- Use of Population-Based Surveys for Estimating the Population Size of Persons Who Inject Drugs in the United States.The Journal of infectious diseases · 2020Article
- Prevalence of Injecting Drug Use and Coverage of Interventions to Prevent HIV and Hepatitis C Virus Infection Among People Who Inject Drugs in Canada.American journal of public health · 2020Article
- "Beyond Safer Injecting"-Health and Social Needs and Acceptance of Support among Clients of a Supervised Injecting Facility.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundInjecting drug use is associated with considerable morbidity and mortality. Estimates of the size of the population of people who inject drugs are critical to inform service planning and estimate disease burden due to injecting drug use. We aimed to estimate the size of the population of people who inject drugs in Australia.
methodsWe applied a multiplier method which used benchmark data (number of people in opioid substitution therapy (OST) on a snapshot day in 2014) and multiplied it by a factor derived from the prevalence of current OST among people who inject drugs participating in the Australian Needle and Syringe Program Survey in 2014. Estimates of the total population of people who inject drugs were calculated in each state and territory and summed to produce a national estimate. We used the sex and age group distribution seen in datasets relating to people who inject drugs to derive sex- and age-stratified estimates, and calculated prevalence per 1000 population.
resultsBetween 68,000 and 118,000 people aged 15-64 years inject drugs in Australia. The population prevalence of injecting drug use was 6.0 (lower and upper uncertainty intervals of 4.3 and 7.6) per 1000 people aged 15-64 years. Injecting drug use was more common among men than women, and most common among those aged 35-44 years. Comparison of expected drug-related deaths based on these estimates to actual deaths suggest that these figures may be underestimates.
conclusionsThese are the first indirect prevalence estimates of injecting drug use in Australia in over a decade. This work has identified that there are limited data available to inform estimates of this population. These estimates can be used as a basis for further work estimating injecting drug use in Australia.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.