The United States' ongoing opioid epidemic may be undoing the hard-fought public health gains of HIV/AIDS reduction, according to a U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention report published Tuesday.
The new report examined data from 22 cities with high numbers of HIV cases and found that while more injection drug users are utilizing needle exchanges, sharing needles is still a major problem: One-third of injection drug users reporting having shared needles in the past year.
Black and Latino Americans saw public health gains including decreased drug injection, syringe sharing and drug-related HIV diagnoses, but injection drug use trends among white Americans have public health officials worried.
