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...

OBJECTIVE To quantify the effect of opiate substitution treatment in relation to HIV transmission among people who inject drugs. DESIGN Systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective published and unpublished observational studies. DATA SOURCES Search of Medline, Embase, PsychINFO, and the Cochrane Library from the earliest year to 2011 without language restriction. REVIEW METHODS We ...

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...

The College in New Brunswick was reluctant to arbitrarily select one approach over the other, even granting the similarities. It was felt appropriate to allow physicians to adopt one of these established approaches to guide them. They could then modify their approach as they gain experience. That said, for the sake of some consistency, the College can point to the most recent guidelines from No...

The ferrite process is an established method for treating wastewaters containing dissolved toxic metals, using precipitation at temperatures above 65 °C. Various ambient-temperature operation methodologies have also been proposed, but the effects of temperature reduction on product stability, and on the extent of isomorphous substitution (in terms of x in Me(x)Fe(3-x)O(4), Me representing a non...

BACKGROUND To determine, in a region of Switzerland, the duration of retention in opioid substitution treatments with methadone (OSTM), duration of treatment interruptions, probability of re-entry to treatment after a treatment interruption, and associated factors. METHODS A secondary analysis of registry-based data was performed with patients (n = 2880) registered in the methadone treatment ...

Manipur and Nagaland in northeast India report an antenatal HIV prevalence of > 1% and the current HIV prevalence among injecting drug users is 24% and 4.5% respectively. Through support from DFID's Challenge Fund, Emmanuel Hospital Association (EHA) established thirteen drop-in-centres across the two states to deliver opioid substitution treatment with sublingual buprenorphine for 1200 injecti...

BACKGROUND Opioid substitution treatment (OST) is recognised as an effective treatment for opioid dependence. Still, a subgroup of OST users continues to inject drugs. This study examines health risks and criminal activity in a population of needle exchange programme (NEP) participants by comparing those identified as current OST users to (i) those identified as former OST users and (ii) those ...

INTRODUCTION Few general practitioners (GP) prescribe opioid substitution therapy. Our aim was to analyse their previously identified motivating factors by describing their frequency and demographic associations. METHODS An anonymous, cross-sectional questionnaire-based survey on opioid prescribing in pain and dependency was distributed across five New South Wales Divisions of GPs. Questions ...

This article explores the burgeoning advocacy movement for methadone and buprenorphine treatment by patients, parents, and doctors in Ukraine, and their efforts to remake a system that infantilizes and controls patients into one where patients have a voice in their treatment. Through a review of gray literature and in-depth interviews with 28 patient-advocates and doctors in five Ukrainian citi...