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Methadone Maintenance and Addicts' Risk of Fatal Heroin Overdose
Abstract
An admission cohort of 296 Australian methadone maintenance patients was followed over 15 years. The relative risks of death in and out of maintenance were calculated for two age groups, 20-29 and 30-39 years. Heroin addicts in both age groups were one-quarter as likely to die while receiving methadone maintenance as addicts not in treatment. This is because they were significantly less likely to die by heroin overdose or suicide while in maintenance. Methadone maintenance had no measurable effect on the risk of death through nonheroin overdose, violence or trauma, or natural causes. A meta-analysis showed the reduction in overall mortality was consistent with the results of cohort studies conducted in the United States, Sweden, and Germany. The combined results of the five studies again indicated that methadone maintenance reduced addicts' risk of death to a quarter, RR 0.25 (95% CI 0.19 to 0.33).
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Cited by
Sordo, L., Barrio, G., Bravo, M. J., Indave, B. I., Degenhardt, L., Wiessing, L., Ferri, M., & Pastor-Barriuso, R. (2017) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.j1550 · Cited by 1,816
Ma, J., Bao, Y.-P., Wang, R.-J., Su, M.-F., Liu, M.-X., Li, J.-Q., Degenhardt, L., Farrell, M., Blow, F. C., Ilgen, M., et al. (2019) · Molecular Psychiatry · doi:10.1038/s41380-018-0094-5 · Cited by 396
Sporer, K. A. (1999) · Annals of Internal Medicine · doi:10.7326/0003-4819-130-7-199904060-00019 · Cited by 342
Lingford-Hughes, A., Welch, S., Peters, L., Nutt, D., & With expert reviewers (in alphabetical order): Ball D, B. N. (2012) · Journal of Psychopharmacology · doi:10.1177/0269881112444324 · Cited by 332
Predictors of non-fatal overdose among a cohort of polysubstance-using injection drug users
Kerr, T., Fairbairn, N., Tyndall, M., Marsh, D., Li, K., Montaner, J., & Wood, E. (2007) · Drug and Alcohol Dependence · doi:10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2006.07.009 · Cited by 313
Metadata
- Authors
- Caplehorn, J. R. M., Dalton, M. Y. N. S., Haldar, F., Petrenas, A.-M., & Nisbet, J. G.
- Venue
- Substance Use & Misuse
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 1996-01
- Volume
- 31
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 177-196
- ISSN
- 1082-6084 (ISSN-L)
- 1532-2491
- OpenAlex
- W2047496048
- Cited by
- 253
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 11.25
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Caplehorn, J. R. M., Dalton, M. Y. N. S., Haldar, F., Petrenas, A.-M., & Nisbet, J. G. (1996). Methadone Maintenance and Addicts' Risk of Fatal Heroin Overdose. Substance Use & Misuse. https://doi.org/10.3109/10826089609045806
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
