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. 2022 Sep 29;75(6):1073-1077.
doi: 10.1093/cid/ciac140.

The Effectiveness of Low Dead Space Syringes for Reducing the Risk of Hepatitis C Virus Acquisition Among People Who Inject Drugs: Findings From a National Survey in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland

Adam Trickey  1 , Sara Croxford  2 , Eva Emanuel  2 , Samreen Ijaz  2 , Matthew Hickman  1   3 , Joanna Kesten  1   3   4 , Clare Thomas  1   3   4 , Claire Edmundson  2 , Monica Desai  2 , Peter Vickerman  1   3
Affiliations

The Effectiveness of Low Dead Space Syringes for Reducing the Risk of Hepatitis C Virus Acquisition Among People Who Inject Drugs: Findings From a National Survey in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland

Adam Trickey et al. Clin Infect Dis. .

Abstract

Syringes with attached needles (termed fixed low dead space syringes [LDSS]) retain less blood following injection than syringes with detachable needles, but evidence on them reducing blood-borne virus transmission among people who inject drugs (PWID) is lacking. Utilizing the UK Unlinked Anonymous Monitoring cross-sectional bio-behavioral surveys among PWID for 2016/18/19 (n = 1429), we showed that always using fixed LDSS was associated with 76% lower likelihood (adjusted odds ratio = 0.24, 95% confidence interval [CI]: .08-.67) of recent hepatitis C virus infection (RNA-positive and antibody-negative) among antibody-negative PWID compared to using any syringes with detachable needles.

Keywords: HCV; IDU; high dead space syringes; injecting drugs; low dead space syringes.

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Conflict of interest statement

Potential conflicts of interest. P. V. reports unrestricted research funding off Gilead unrelated to this work. M. H. reports personal fees from Gilead, Abbvie, and MSD as unrestricted speaker fees and support for travel in last 5 years and is Trustee of Society of Study of Addiction and Regional Editor of Addiction. C. T. reports funding awarded to the institution from the National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Unit in Behavioral Science and Evaluation and National Institute for Health Research Applied Collaboration West outside of the submitted work. P. V. reports grant made to institution from National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Unit in Behavioral Science and Evaluation outside of the submitted work. J. K. reports being partly funding by NIHR ARC West and NIHR HPRU in BSE via the University of Bristol for the current study. All other authors report no potential conflicts. All authors have submitted the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest. Conflicts that the editors consider relevant to the content of the manuscript have been disclosed.

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