Topological and Historical Considerations for Infectious Disease Transmission among Injecting Drug Users in Bushwick, Brooklyn (USA)

Authors

Kirk Dombrowski, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Richard Curtis, CUNY John Jay CollegeFollow
Samuel Friedman, National Development Research Institute
Bilal Khan, CUNY John Jay CollegeFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2013

Citation

Published in World Journal of AIDS (2013) 3: 1-9. DOI:10.4236/wja.2013.31001

Comments

Copyright © 2013 SciRes. Used by Permission

Abstract

Recent interest by physicists in social networks and disease transmission factors has prompted debate over the topology of degree distributions in sexual networks. Social network researchers have been critical of “scale-free” Barabasi-Albert approaches, and largely rejected the preferential attachment, “rich-get-richer” assumptions that underlie that model. Instead, research on sexual networks has pointed to the importance of homophily and local sexual norms in dictating degree distributions, and thus disease transmission thresholds. Injecting Drug User (IDU) network topologies may differ from the emerging models of sexual networks, however. Degree distribution analysis of a Brooklyn, NY, IDU network indicates a different topology than the spanning tree configurations discussed for sexual networks, instead featuring comparatively short cycles and high concurrency. Our findings suggest that IDU networks do in some ways conform to a “scale-free” topology, and thus may represent “reservoirs” of potential infection despite seemingly low transmission thresholds.