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...

Many state Medicaid programs restrict access to buprenorphine, a prescription medication that relieves withdrawal symptoms for people addicted to heroin or other opiates. The reason is that officials fear that the drug is costlier or less safe than other therapies such as methadone. To find out if this is true, we compared spending, the use of services related to drug-use relapses, and mortalit...

BACKGROUND We sought to test the effectiveness of methadone and buprenorphine in the treatment of methamphetamine withdrawal craving over a 17-day treatment period. METHODS Patients were randomized into one of two groups. The study sample comprised 40 male subjects dependent on methamphetamine who met criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, for me...

Buprenorphine is a potent partial opioid agonist that is analyzed in urine to (i) monitor adherence to maintenance or detoxification therapy and (ii) detect illicit use. Buprenorphine analysis is commonly conducted on urine by immunoassay, but is subject to cross-reactivity from other drugs/drug metabolites, including morphine, codeine and dihydrocodeine. This study reports false-positive bupre...

BACKGROUND Opiate dependence is a major health and social issue in many countries. A mainstay of therapy has been methadone maintenance treatment, but other treatments, particularly buprenorphine, are increasingly being considered. AIM To conduct a systematic review to synthesise and critically appraise the evidence on the effectiveness of community maintenance programmes with methadone or bu...

BACKGROUND Some recent studies have suggested a lower risk of fatal intoxications in drug-dependent patients under buprenorphine compared to methadone treatment. METHODS Epidemiological reference data for the Munich region suggest that in 2003 approximately 10 % of all substitution patients were treated with buprenorphine, and 87 % with methadone. We studied the proportion of patients under m...

We evaluated the effect of buprenorphine, a mixed agonist for μ-opioid receptors and nociceptin/orphanin FQ peptide (NOP) receptors, in neuropathic rats, using the paw pressure test. Buprenorphine, administered i.p. at 50, but not 20, μg/kg, exhibited naloxone-reversible analgesic activity in naïve rats. In contrast, buprenorphine at 0.5 - 20 μg/kg produced a naloxonesensitive antihyperalgesic ...

Six male post-detoxified opiate dependent subjects were evaluated for abuse liability of buprenorphine (0.6 mg), morphine (16 mg), pentazocine (30 mg) and distilled water (placebo) intramuscular injection in a single blind cross-over random order. Subjective states, drug discrimination, drug linking, sedation and euphoria were assessed at pre-injection, 30 min and 4 hrs post-injection. Buprenor...

In a double-blind randomized non-crossover trial 47 patients received either morphine or buprenorphine by regular i.m. injection for 24 h after abdominal surgery. The two drugs were equally effective as analgesics at the doses used. Five in the buprenorphine group and none in the morphine group were excluded because of respiratory depression. Four of these had received opiates during operation....

Some studies report differences in opioid withdrawal between racial/ethnic groups. However, it is not known if these differences are reflected in differential treatment response. Data from National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Clinical Trials Network-003 were used to examine racial/ethnic differences before and during stabilization with buprenorphine. At induction, non-Hispanic Caucasians had...