As the coronavirus pandemic shut down the nation in March of 2020, the U.S. authorities instructed methadone clinics they might permit secure sufferers with opioid dependancy to take their medication at residence unsupervised.
Methadone, an opioid itself, could be harmful in massive quantities and most sufferers are required to take the liquid medication day by day at clinics. It wasn’t clear whether or not the relaxed take-home policy would trigger extra hurt than good.
Now, a new study of deadly overdoses from January 2019 to August 2021 means that easing entry was protected. It didn’t result in extra deaths involving the remedy drug.
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The share of overdose deaths involving methadone declined from 4.5% in January 2019 to three.2% in August 2021, the research discovered.
The discovering could assist make the change everlasting, wrote the authors, who’re U.S. authorities researchers from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention and the Nationwide Institute on Drug Abuse.
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Dr. Neeraj Gandotra, chief medical officer of the federal company that regulates methadone clinics, known as the early evaluation “very promising.”
When the federal government eased restrictions, it mentioned secure sufferers may obtain 28 days of take-home methadone and fewer secure ones may get 14 days. Clinics had been allowed to determine which sufferers had been eligible; many relied on standards reminiscent of time in remedy and absence of felony exercise.
Greater than 400,000 individuals in the US take methadone as a part of their remedy for dependancy to opioids reminiscent of heroin, fentanyl, and painkillers. Methadone, when used accurately, can cease drug cravings with out inflicting a excessive.
The research, printed Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry, discovered that overdose deaths general — together with these involving methadone — elevated in March 2020. Then, within the months after the coverage change, deaths involving methadone held regular whereas different deadly overdoses continued to climb.
Greater than 107,000 People died of drug overdoses final 12 months, a file within the nation’s overdose epidemic. Will increase had been pushed by deaths involving fentanyl, cocaine, and different stimulants.
