Death Risk Rises for New Injection Drug Users

People who recently began injecting heroin or cocaine face a risk of death more than three times higher than similarly aged people who do not inject drugs, researchers report. This study is one of the first using new onset injection drug users to suggest that mortality risk rises significantly soon after a person starts injecting and continues to escalate.

In the study, scientists recruited 256 new onset injection drug users in Baltimore in 1988–89, and followed them for 12 years.

After only three years of injecting, drug users faced a death risk that was 3.1 times higher than what would be expected among the general population of their peers in the same age, gender, and race groups. The risk of death after eight years was eight-fold higher than their peers.

Causes of Death

Causes of death included HIV/AIDS, drug overdose, cardiovascular disease, gunshot, and medical complications of drug abuse, such as liver disease.

Data from this study suggest that the danger of death associated with injection drug use starts early, and the risk increases with continued injections.

Dr. David Vlahov and his colleagues at the New York Academy of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published this NIDA-funded study in the August 2004 issue of the journal Addiction.