U.S. DONATES $8 MILLION TO DRUG-USER STUDY

The Funds Will Support A Local Health Study On Injection Users, And
One On Youth At Risk

The U.S. health department will spend more than $3 million over five
years to support the Vancouver Injection Drug Users Study and fund a
sub-study on youth at risk, the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS
announced Thursday.

The Vancouver Injection Drug Users Study (VIDUS) has tracked the lives
and the health of drug users in Vancouver since 1996. The area of
study includes Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, which has one of the
densest populations of injection drug users in North America.

"We're now in the position, by adding the youth component to our
existing study, to study the natural history of injection drug use
from initiation to cessation or death," VIDUS co-principal
investigator Thomas Kerr said in an interview.

"We can study what helps people avoid starting injection and what
helps people stay alive and healthy, and what helps them quit injecting."

Vancouver has been at the "leading edge" in injection drug use
research for some time, Kerr said.

"We have a unique setting. We have a very well set up Centre for
Excellence in HIV/AIDS that has a proven track record in conducting
research of this kind. We also have a very large HIV epidemic and we
have a large, open drug scene. We've been following these people now
for a long time."

VIDUS is an observational study that follows a defined group of
people, or cohort, over time. Large, long-standing studies of
injection drug users are hard to come by as they are expensive and
complicated to set up. As well, keeping track of participants can be a
major challenge.

As a result, the VIDUS study which follows more than 1,500 injection
drug users, is a "critical source of information about what is a very
serious health and social problem in Canada and elsewhere," Kerr said.

The Downtown Eastside's density works to Kerr's advantage. "We have a
very high follow-up rate with our study," he said. "Participation has
been great. Even when they spend time in jail or move to other cities,
many still [check in]. We're also very good at finding them."

The U.S. government's $612,000 annual grant is awarded by the U.S.
Department of Health's National Institutes of Health on a competitive
basis for academic merit, Brian Harrigan, B.C. Centre for Excellence
in HIV/AIDS director of administration and operations, said in an interview.

The sub-study on youth-at-risk will look at the circumstances that
lead to injection drug use, the rate at which youth begin injecting
and what might help prevent youth from starting to inject, Kerr said.

The study will encompass an assessment of the impact of crystal
methamphetamine.

"This is a serious problem and early indications suggest the problem
is getting worse," Kerr said. "There are serious health complications
associated with crystal meth use and this study will help us gain a
better understanding of the problem and the ways we can address it."

An estimated 2,500 street youth live in the Vancouver
area.

Kerr hopes to begin reporting results on the youth study within 18
months. VIDUS received $1.5 million in funding from the NIH between
1998 and 2001 to study needle exchange in the local HIV epidemic.

VIDUS alerted policy makers to the HIV outbreak in 1996, documented
the extent and dynamics of the epidemic, evaluated HIV treatment,
demonstrated the role of cocaine use as a predictor of HIV infection,
and provided data that led to the establishment of Vancouver's
safe-injection facility.

The funding will help sustain two principal investigators and probably
a dozen staff, interviewers and nurses, Harrigan said.

The B.C. Centre for Excellence is also evaluating the supervised
injection site, and working on another large cohort study for the
Vancouver Coastal Health Authority.