Citation

Siegal HA, Falck RS, Wang J, Carlson RG. Sex. Transm. Dis. 1996; 23(4): 277-282.

Affiliation

Substance Abuse Intervention Program, School of Medicine, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio 45435, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1996, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

8836020

Abstract

During 1992-95, in Ohio, outreach workers at various sites in Dayton and Columbus interviewed 749 men and 297 women about their drug use practices, sexual behaviors, drug-sex behaviors, and history of some sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Researchers aimed to assess baseline behaviors of injection drug users and crack cocaine users. 73.2% of the men and 57.2% of the women used injection drugs. 26.8% of the men and 42.8% of the women used crack cocaine. About 25% of both groups were homeless. 79.7% of men and 68.7% of the women were Black. Among men, Blacks were more likely than Whites to have had syphilis and gonorrhea or any STD (6.2% vs. 2%, 48.6% vs. 19.1%, and 53.6% vs. 29%, respectively; p 0.05). Among women, Blacks were more likely to have had trichomonas (40.2% vs. 26.1%; p 0.05). For men, variables associated with not always using condoms in the last 30 days included STD history (odds ratio [OR] = 0.53; p = 0.0069), cohabitation (OR = 0.13; p = 0.00001), and injection drug use (when compared with crack cocaine use) (OR = 0.52; p = 0.0063); for women, they were exchanging sex for drugs (OR = 0.31; p = 0.0252) and cohabitation (OR = 0.22; p = 0.0157). Women who traded sex for money were significantly more likely to always use condoms in the last 30 days than those who did not (OR = 4.48; p = 0.0008). These findings show that injection drug users and crack cocaine users face a high risk of acquiring and transmitting STDs. They suggest that intervention efforts to target these two groups need to be sensitive to ethnic and gender differences.

Language: en