OBJECTIVES To examine survival and long term cessation of injecting in a cohort of drug users and to assess the influence of opiate substitution treatment on these outcomes. DESIGN Prospective open cohort study. SETTING A single primary care facility in Edinburgh. PARTICIPANTS 794 patients with a history of injecting drug use presenting between 1980 and 2007; 655 (82%) were followed up by...

Given that buprenorphine + naloxone is prescribed for opioid-dependent pregnant women, it is important to examine the extent to which it differs from buprenorphine alone, methadone, or methadone-assisted withdrawal on neonatal and maternal outcomes. Summary statistics on maternal and neonatal outcomes were collected from 7 previously published studies examining treatment for opioid-dependent pr...

Forty opioid substitution patients (methadone, n = 14; LAAM, n = 14; and buprenorphine, n = 12) who were participating in a study on the impact of opiate substitution treatment on driving ability and 22 non-opiate-using control subjects were administered 14.7 g/70 kg of alcohol in two separate sessions, one 2-3 hours before opioid pharmacotherapy dosing and the other 1-2 hours after dosing. The...

AIMS Screening for concomitant drug consumption is necessary in opiate substitution therapy of opiate-dependent patients. Adulteration of samples is a common problem in this setting. A recently developed polyethylene glycol marker system allows reliable identification of urine samples. In this study, we aimed to compare the rates of drug detection in conventional and marker urine samples. DES...

AIM To present medically assisted treatment for opiate addiction with substitution medicament Suboxone and prevention of social exclusion of young opiate addicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina. GENERAL OVERVIEW Until recently there was no solution for long-term and comprehensive treatment of young persons who suffer from opiate addiction. This is not an illness that impairs only psychological and ...

Opiate dependence affects about 15,479,000 people worldwide. The effectiveness of opiate substitution treatments (OST) has been widely demonstrated. Buprenorphine plays a particular role in opiate dependence care provision in France. It is widely prescribed by physicians and national opiate substitution treatment guidelines have been available since 2004. In order to study the prescribing of bu...

Injection Drug Use and HIV Infection Injection drug use has been associated with severe health and social harms. 2 High rates of disease, death, crime, and the accompanying costs are drug-related harms experienced throughout the world. Injection drug use has also been identified as a key risk characteristic for HIV infection in many countries around the world. Explosive epidemics of HIV have em...

Methadone overdoses are increasing in parallel with the increased frequency of opiate substitution therapy in adults. Although unintentional methadone intoxication in children is rare, it is becoming more frequently recognized. We report 3 cases of unintentional methadone overdose in toddlers who initially displayed central nervous system depression associated with severe nonketotic hyperglycem...