Medical Consequences of Drug Abuse and Co-occurring Infections: A Brief Review

Today substance abuse remains one of the major problems in the world with millions of people abusing legal and illegal drugs. In addition, almost one-third of the world population of 6.7 billion people may also be infected with one or more infections. Both drugs of abuse and infections are associated with enormous burden of social, economic and health consequences. This paper briefly discusses a few medical consequences of drugs of abuse and infections such as human immunodeficiency virus and hepatitis C virus. Research is encouraged to study interactions between infections, drugs of abuse, and underlying pathophysiologic and molecular/genetic mechanisms of these interactions.