People Who Inject Drugs in Three Regions of

As part of a comprehensive health care programme for people who use drugs in Nepal, HIV and viral hepatitis B and C status—including risk factors, HCV-genotypes and co-infections —as well as two IL28B Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were assessed for a ran-dom sample of 401 people who inject drugs in three regions of Nepal: mid-western Terrai (Nepalgunj), the eastern region (Dharan, Biratnagar) and the central region (Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Chitwan). Individuals were included who showed at least a minimum of health care seeking behaviour. This latter criterion was defined by being registered with any orga-nisation offering health services. The average age of the participants was 30.5 yrs, and the average length of intravenous drug use was 8.5 yrs. The prevalence rates of HBsAg, anti-HIV antibodies and HCV-RNA were 3.5%, 13.8 % and 41.9%, respectively. Spontaneous HCV clearance was evident in 16 % of all of those who tested positive for anti-HCV antibod-ies. Independent risk factors for HCV-RNA positivity were age, gender, geographical region, duration of injecting drug use, history of imprisonment and HIV co-infection. In the age group24 yrs, the rate of spontaneous HCV clearance was 43.5%. Overall, 59.8 % of HC