Comparing sexual risks and patterns of alcohol and drug use between injection drug users (IDUs) and non-IDUs who report sexual partnerships with IDUs in St. Petersburg, Russia

Table 1 Comparing prevalence of substance use and sexual risk practices between heterosexual IDUs (n = 331) and non-IDUs (n = 65)

	IDU	non-IDU
	n (%)*¹	n (%)*¹	p-value
Demographics
Age (median, IQR)	29 (25-32)	24 (21-32)	< 0.001*
Male sex	243 (73)	26 (40)	< 0.001
Married/partnered	135 (41)	15 (23)	0.009
Postsecondary education	191 (58)	50 (77)	0.004
Employed	147 (44)	51 (80)	< 0.001
Live with family	196 (59)	27 (42)	0.009
Any legal income	250 (76)	58 (89)	0.015
Jail	116 (36)	2 (3)	< 0.001
Homeless	61 (18)	9 (14)	0.376
Sexual behavior of subjects in the past 6 months
Had > 1 sex partner	141 (43)	44 (68)	< 0.001
Any casual partner	145 (44)	43 (66)	0.001
Had a new (< 90 days) partner	172 (58)	38 (62)	0.491
Unprotected sex at last intercourse with any partner	183 (59)	44 (71)	0.074
Unprotected sex at last intercourse with casual partners*²	114 (34)	37 (57)	0.001
Had sex when high on drugs or alcohol*³	228 (70)	35 (55)	0.017
Sexually transmitted infections
Tested positive for HIV antibodies	90 (27)	2 (3)	< 0.001
Tested positive for a non-viral STI*⁴	19 (6)	7 (11)	0.166
Alcohol consumption in the past month
Risky alcohol use*⁵	208 (66)	50 (85)	0.004
Days used alcohol last 30 days (median, IQR)	5 (2-15)	5 (2-10)	0.816*
Drinks on average each time drinking (median, IQR)	3 (2-5)	3 (2-5)	0.667*
Days had > 4 drinks in 2 hours or got drunk (median, IQR)	1 (0-4)	1 (0-3)	0.687*
Illicit drug consumption in the past month* ⁶
Meth use*⁷	60 (18)	7 (11)	0.155
Injection practices in the last 6 months
Unsafe injection, 30 days	82 (25)
Number of times injected last 30 days, median (p25-75)	20 (8-30)

* Wilcoxon rank-sum test
*¹ among participants who replied the question
*² i.e. had unprotected sex with non-main or new (< 90 days) sexual partners
*³ had sex while participant or partner or both were drunk or high
*⁴ Chlamydia trachomatis, Neisseiae gonorrheae and/or syphilis serology
*⁵ determined by an at-risk AUDIT-C score
*⁶ IDUs injected mostly heroin and meth. All other drugs such as cocaine, crack, speedball were < 7% prevalence among
IDUs as well as among non-IDUs
*⁷ i.e. amphetamine, ephedrine or methamphetamine. Among IDUs 99% of meth was consumed in the form of injection

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