At present, patients with opioid use disorder may be required to appear at a pharmacy every day for two to three months to begin treatment with methadone or morphine, which should be closely monitored. “You need a high level of motivation to follow these treatments,” said Didier Jutras-Aswad, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Montreal and lead author of a study published Wednesday in the American Journal of Psychiatry. “But we also have people who were really motivated or people who may have real motivations for treatment, but who do not want to start this type of treatment knowing how demanding it is.” He noted that those who struggle with addiction are often in precarious and vulnerable situations. New study shows that it is possible to offer a more flexible treatment at home without reducing the chances of success. The Public Health Service of Canada reported that more than 5,386 Canadians died from opioid overdoses between January and September 2021, accounting for approximately 20 deaths per day. In 2018, before the COVID-19 pandemic, there were 12 deaths a day. The new treatment, developed in a clinical trial through the Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Misuse, is based on the prescription buprenorphine-naloxone, also known as Suboxone. Between October 2017 and March 2020, the clinical research team recruited more than 270 volunteers at seven hospitals in Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. The average age of the participants was 39 and 35 percent of them were women. Everyone has struggled with opioid addiction, either over-the-counter or over-the-counter drugs such as morphine, oxycodone or fentanyl. Patients were randomly divided into two groups, with half receiving methadone under close supervision at a pharmacy and the other half taking Suboxone, which could be taken mainly at home. Both groups were invited to undergo treatment for 24 weeks. “(Suboxone) λίγο is slightly less potent than methadone and is often associated with a lower risk of overdose,” said Jutras-Aswad. This fits in with the researchers’ proposed care model in which the level of supervision was reduced. Jutras-Aswad said the researchers recommended that after the first two weeks, patients could continue Suboxone treatment without supervision at home for a week – requiring only one visit to the pharmacy. Eventually, visits to pharmacies were reduced to two per month. He said the study aimed to determine if a more flexible treatment, with much less oversight, would be just as effective in reducing drug use as current methadone treatment. “Our study showed that buprenorphine… was no less than methadone treatment for people who took it unattended, with even a trend showing that buprenorphine is slightly more effective than methadone,” said Jutras-Aswad. He added that buprenorphine also offers more flexibility than methadone in the event of a change of treatment. “It’s not a small thing to have to go to the pharmacy every day,” said Jutras-Aswad. “I think this is a winning model… that really allows us to respond to a catastrophic situation.” This Canadian Press report was first published on June 15, 2022. SHARE:
