The grip of opioid addiction is so strong that many people who undergo treatment relapse repeatedly. Now a study by Johns Hopkins University researchers offers new clues about why treatment is so difficult.
The researchers discovered that 43 percent of people receiving buprenorphine, a widely used anti-addiction medication, filled at least one prescription for opioids — which they presumably consumed or diverted to others.
They also found that the average length of stay on buprenorphine was just 55 days, much less than the months or years that experts believe it may take to conquer a substance-abuse disorder with the help of such drugs. Once patients stopped getting the anti-addiction medication, two-thirds of them went back to filling prescriptions for opioids, according to the study, published Thursday in the journal Addiction.
Caleb Alexander, co-director of the Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said his team’s research “raises important questions about the quality of care these patients are receiving and the degree to which their care is coordinated across our fragmented health care system.”
