To determine the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a program to provide screening for tuberculosis infection and directly observed preventive therapy (DOPT) in methadone maintenance clinics, we determined completion rates of screening for tuberculosis infection, medical evaluation, and preventive therapy, as well as the number of active tuberculosis cases and tuberculosis-related deaths p...

Methadone maintenance therapy is designed to reduce the need for addicts to use heroin or other illegal opiates. Death in patients starting on such a program has not previously been documented. We report the death of 10 persons who died within days of starting a methadone maintenance program administered by general practitioners. Their bodies were subject to a full autopsy by forensic pathologi...

BACKGROUND The long-term effects of opiate use on human brain are not known. The goal of this preliminary study was to determine whether human subjects with histories of opiate dependence have persistent differences in brain function as compared with individuals without substance use disorders, and whether methadone maintenance reverses or ameliorates the potential abnormality. METHOD Positro...

conclusions the prevalence of hbv, hiv, and psychiatric disorders in our study group was lower than in previous reports. this may be because we entered participants from private mmt centers. therefore, our results are not generalizable to other populations. nevertheless, hcv prevalence was higher, and our results lead us to recommend that training programs be planned to prevent the outbreak of ...

BACKGROUND Various drugs have been suggested for treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)-a disabling disease affecting two percent of the general population. If a drug could alleviate a wide range of symptoms, it would be more suitable. In these disorders drug addiction is very common. This fact makes the symptoms complicated and the treatment more difficult. SUBJECTS AND METHODS T...

AND INTRODUCTION One pharmacological treatment for opiate addiction is maintenance on opioid agonists (McKim, 2007). Maintenance drugs alleviate withdrawal symptoms, reduce craving, and block some of the effects of heroin, thereby decreasing the likelihood of relapse and drug-associated criminal behavior (McKim, 2007). Methadone is an orally-administered mu-opioid agonist, which was approved fo...

BACKGROUND Methadone is currently the most frequently used substance in the treatment of short-term and particularly long-term opiate dependence. Patients' beliefs about the adverse effects of methadone on function of organs, especially liver, have widely affected the use of this substance. This study aimed to determine the effects of methadone on liver enzyme levels in patients on methadone ma...