BACKGROUND This paper is based on research examining stakeholder involvement in substitution treatment policy which was undertaken as part of the EU funded FP7 ALICE-RAP (Addictions and Lifestyles in Contemporary Europe - Reframing Addictions Project). In England, the research coincided with a policy shift towards a recovery orientated drug treatment framework and a heated debate surrounding th...

The recent biological theory of adaptive dynamics [6,9] proposes a description of the long term evolution of an asexual population by putting emphasis on the ecological interactions between individuals, in contrast with classical population genetics models which focus on the genetic structure of the population. The basic models are individual-based models in which the population dynamics is pre...

BACKGROUND People who inject drugs (PWID) use healthcare services, including primary care, at a disproportionately high rate. We investigated key correlates of general practitioner (GP) related service utilisation within a cohort of PWID. METHODS Using baseline data from a cohort of 645 community-recruited PWID based in Melbourne, Victoria, we conducted a secondary analysis of associations be...

BACKGROUND Opioid maintenance treatment (OMT) is the most widely used treatment for opioid dependence. The opioid maintenance treatment (OMT) programme represents an opportunity for people who are opioid users to minimize the many negative health and societal outcomes associated with opioid use through meeting the physiological need of their bodies for opioids. The purpose of this study is to s...

Opioid intoxications and overdose are associated with high rates of morbidity and mortality. Opioid overdose may occur in the setting of intravenous or intranasal heroin use, illicit use of diverted opioid medications, intentional or accidental misuse of prescription pain medications, or iatrogenic overdose. In this review, we focused on the epidemiology of illict opioid use in the United State...

BACKGROUND Substitution with opioid-agonists (e.g., methadone) has shown to be an effective treatment for chronic long-term opioid dependency. Patient satisfaction with treatment has been associated with improved addiction treatment outcomes. However, there is a paucity of studies evaluating patients' satisfaction with Opioid Substitution Treatment (OST). In the present study, participants' sat...

BACKGROUND About a third of the global HIV infections outside sub-Saharan Africa are related to injecting drug use (IDU), and this accounts for a growing proportion of persons living with HIV. This paper is a response to the need to monitor the state of the HIV epidemic as it relates to IDU and the availability of HIV treatment and harm reduction services in 21 high epidemic countries. METHOD...

Buprenorphine is a partial μ-opioid receptor agonist that is approved for the treatment of opioid dependency. It is generally believed to be safer than methadone because of its ceiling effect on respiratory depression. As more adults in US households use buprenorphine, an increasing number of children are being exposed. We report a fatal exposure to buprenorphine in a small child that occurred ...

Opioid Substitution Treatment (OST) is a harm reduction strategy enabling opiate consumers to avoid withdrawal symptoms and maintain health and wellbeing. Some research shows that within a disaster context service disruptions and infrastructure damage affect OST services, including problems with accessibility, dosing, and scripts. Currently little is known about planning for OST in the reductio...

More patients with opioid addiction are receiving opioid agonist therapy (OAT) with methadone and buprenorphine. As a result, physicians will more frequently encounter patients receiving OAT who develop acutely painful conditions, requiring effective treatment strategies. Undertreatment of acute pain is suboptimal medical treatment, and patients receiving long-term OAT are at particular risk. T...