Mortality among injecting drugs users - a follow-up study of injecting drug user cohorts.

这项研究将跟踪1990年代和2000年代参与研究的注射毒品使用者，以检查这些群体随着时间的推移的死亡率。这些研究的识别信息将与国家死亡指数数据交叉引用，以确定死亡的参与者及其死亡日期。这项研究将是澳大利亚第一次确定在戒毒治疗场所以外的一组确定的注射吸毒者的死亡率。对一个确定的群体进行研究，克服了单纯根据与注射毒品有关的死亡人数来估计死亡率所带来的一些问题。虽然可以找到死亡人数，但由于吸毒的隐蔽性以及吸毒和毒品市场的动态特点，面临注射毒品相关死亡风险的人数并不清楚。对注射毒品使用者死亡率随时间变化的趋势进行审查，可以提供关于毒品使用模式和市场变化的深入了解。例如，这项研究将审查90年代末海洛因供应量高时期和2000年以来海洛因供应中断时期（海洛因“干旱”）注射吸毒死亡率的变化。此外，还可以通过比较死亡的注射吸毒者和幸存者的特点来探讨与注射吸毒相关的死亡率有关的因素，这些特点包括吸毒和吸毒治疗史、精神疾病等合并症以及社会人口背景。这一信息可通过查明最有可能发生注射毒品相关死亡的个人，为预防过量用药和减少危害战略提供信息。这项研究还将引起人们对注射吸毒造成的重大公共卫生负担的关注。此外，通过将这项研究的结果与海外其他类似研究的结果进行比较，我们可以更可靠地比较澳大利亚注射毒品使用者群体与其他国家同龄人的死亡率。

This study will follow-up injecting drug users that participated in research in the 1990s and 2000s to examine mortality rates in these groups over time. Identifying information from these studies will be cross-referenced with National Death Index data to determine participants that died and the dates of their death. This study will be the first in Australia to determine mortality rates over time in a defined cohort of injecting drug users outside drug treatment settings. Studying a defined group overcomes some of the problems associated with mortality rate estimates based simply on the number of injecting drug-related deaths. Although the number of deaths can be found, the number of people at risk of injecting drug-related death is unclear because of the hidden nature of drug use and the dynamic characteristics of drug use and drug markets. The examination of mortality trends among injecting drug users over time can provide insights regarding changes in drug use patterns and markets. For example, this study will examine changes in injecting drug use mortality across periods of high heroin availability in the late '90s and periods of interrupted heroin supply - the heroin 'drought' - from 2000 onwards. In addition, factors related to injecting drug-related mortality can be explored by comparing the characteristics of injecting drug users that died and those that survived, such as drug use and drug treatment histories, co-morbidities such as mental illness and socio-demographic backgrounds. This information can inform overdose prevention and harm reduction strategies by identifying individuals most at risk of injecting drug-related mortality. This study will also draw attention to the significant public health burden of injecting drug use. In addition, by comparing the results from this study with other similar studies from overseas, we can more reliably compare mortality among groups of Australian injecting drug users with their peers in other countries.