Real-World Eligibility for HIV Pre-exposure Prophylaxis Among People Who Inject Drugs

Recent studies have highlighted the efficacy of and willingness to use pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to prevent HIV infection among people who inject drugs (PWID), however knowledge of real-world applicability is limited. We aimed to quantify the real-world eligibility for HIV-PrEP among HIV-negative PWID in Montreal, Canada (n = 718). Eligibility was calculated according to US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines and compared to risk of HIV acquisition according to the assessing the risk of contracting HIV (ARCH-IDU) risk screening tool. Over one-third of participants (37%) were eligible for HIV PrEP, with 1/3 of these eligible due to sexual risk alone. Half of participants were considered high risk of HIV acquisition according to ARCH-IDU, but there was poor agreement between the two measures. Although a large proportion of PWID were eligible for HIV-PrEP, better tools that are context- and location-informed are needed to identify PWID at higher risk of HIV acquisition.