Journal of Behavioral Medicine, Vol. 27, No. 6, December 2004 ( C  2004) Health Conditions Among Aging Narcotics Addicts: Medical Examination Results Yih-Ing Hser, 1,2 Lillian Gelberg, 1 Valerie Hoffman, 1 Christine E. Grella, 1 William McCarthy, 1 and M. Douglas Anglin 1 Accepted for publication: February 7, 2004 The study examined health conditions among an aging cohort of male nar- cotics addicts. This prospective cohort study (1964–1998) included interviews and medical testing for 108 surviving subjects who had been admitted to the California Civil Addict Program during the years 1962 through 1964. Medical testing results were: 51.9% had high blood pressure, 22.4% showed hyperlipi- demia, 13.3% had elevated levels of blood glucose, 33.6% had abnormal pul- monary function, half of the sample had abnormal liver function, and 94.2% tested positive for hepatitis C, 85.6% for hepatitis B, 3.8% for syphilis, and 27.3% for TB. The study empirically demonstrated poor health conditions and high morbidity among surviving narcotics addicts. KEY WORDS: heroin addicts; morbidity; health conditions; long-term follow-up. INTRODUCTION Recent evidence (Hser et al., 2001; Laine et al., 2001) suggests that general practitioners should be vigilant for patients with a history of il- licit drug use and, when treating such patients, should be especially at- tentive to medical risk factors that are likely to be elevated in this popu- lation. Considerable research evidence attests to the high morbidity rates associated with the socially sanctioned drugs, nicotine, and alcohol (Davis 1 University of California, Los Angeles, California. 2 To whom correspondence should be addressed at UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Pro- grams, 1640 S. Sepulveda Boulevard, Suite 200, Los Angeles, California 90025; e-mail: yhser@ucla.edu. 607 0160-7715/04/1200-0607/0 C  2004 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.