title: Differences in the social networks of ethnic Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese injecting drug users and their implications for blood-borne virus transmission.
abstract: The social networks of 49 ethnic Vietnamese injecting drug users (IDUs) and 150 IDUs of other ethnicities recruited in Melbourne, Australia, were examined for ethnic differences in distribution of hepatitis C virus infection risk using social network analysis and molecular epidemiology. Vietnamese IDUs were more highly connected than non-Vietnamese IDUs, and more likely to be members of dense injecting sub-networks. More related infections were detected in IDUs with discordant ethnicities than were captured in the social network data; nonetheless, most dyads and most IDU pairs with related infections had matching ethnicity, confirming that mixing was assortative on that criterion. Mixing was not obviously dissortative by risk; low-risk Vietnamese IDUs injected more frequently than did correspondingly low-risk non-Vietnamese IDUs, but results for other measures were reversed or equivocal. Network measurements suggest that ethnic Vietnamese IDUs are at elevated risk of blood-borne infection, a conclusion supported by their relatively high HIV prevalence.
authors.affiliation: Epidemiology and Social Research Program, Macfarlane Burnet Institute for Medical Research and Public Health, Melbourne, Australia. aitken@burnet.edu.au
authors.forename: C K
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Aitken
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Higgs
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bowden
mesh_terms: D005006:Ethnicity / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016174:Hepacivirus / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D006526:Hepatitis C / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000635:transmission*; D006801:Humans; D015995:Prevalence; D012944:Social Support; D015819:Substance Abuse, Intravenous / Q000150:complications*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014744:Vietnam / Q000453:epidemiology