Higher syringe coverage is associated with lower odds of HIV risk and does not increase unsafe syringe disposal among syringe exchange program clients

ObjectiveTo determine if adequate syringe coverage – “one shot for one syringe” – among syringe exchange program (SEP) clients is associated with injection-related HIV risk behaviors and syringe disposal.DesignHIV risk assessments with 1577 injection drug users (IDUs) recruited from 24 SEPs in California between 2001 and 2003. Individual syringe coverage was calculated as a proportion of syringes retained from SEP visits to total number of injections in the last 30 days.ResultsParticipants were divided into four groups based on syringe coverage: <50%, 50–99%, 100–149%, and 150% or more. In multivariate logistic regression, SEP clients with less than 50% syringe coverage had significantly higher odds of reporting receptive syringe sharing in the last 30 days (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 2.3; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.4, 3.6) and those with 150% or more coverage had lower odds of reporting receptive syringe sharing (AOR = 0.5; 95%CI = 0.3, 0.8) as compared to SEP clients with adequate syringe coverage of 100–149%. Similar associations were observed for other main outcomes of distributive syringe sharing and syringe re-use. No differences in safe syringe disposal were observed by syringe coverage.ConclusionsIndividual syringe coverage is strongly associated with safer injection behaviors without impacting syringe disposal among SEP clients. Syringe coverage is a useful measure for determining if IDUs are obtaining sufficient syringes to lower HIV risk.