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Tampering by Office-based Methadone Maintenance Patients with Methadone Take Home Privileges: a Pilot Study

Overview
Journal Harm Reduct J
Publisher Biomed Central
Specialties Pharmacology
Psychiatry
Date 2007 Nov 1
PMID 17971216
Citations 7
Authors
Michael Varenbut
David Teplin
Jeff Daiter
Barak Raz
Andrew Worster
Pasha Emadi-Konjin
Nathan Frank
Alan Konyer
Iris Greenwald
Melissa Snider-Adler
Affiliations
Soon will be listed here.
Abstract

Methadone Maintenance Treatment (MMT) is among the most widely studied treatments for opiate dependence with proven benefits for patients and society. When misused, however, methadone can also be lethal. The issue of methadone diversion is a major concern for all MMT programs. A potential source for such diversion is from those MMT patients who receive daily take home methadone doses. Using a reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography method, seven of the nine patients who were randomly selected to have all of their remaining methadone take home doses (within a 24 hour period) analyzed, returned lower than expected quantities of methadone. This finding suggests the possibility that such patients may have tampered with their daily take home doses. Larger prospective observational studies are clearly needed to test the supposition of this pilot study.

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