The treatment encompasses use of buprenorphine and naloxone as safe and acceptable addiction treatment to wean teenagers away from heroin and prescription painkillers.
Buprenorphine is used to alleviate pain and naloxone to prevent or reverse the effects of opiaid. The drugs are sold together as suboxone and help in targeting withdrawal symptoms.
Dr George Woody, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Department of Psychiatry, and the lead author of the study said, “if you keep these young kids, average one-and-a-half years of addiction on buprenorphine-naloxone they did a lot better. When you took them off buprenorphine-naloxone, their opioid use went up.”
The study focused on 152 young people addicted to drugs. All were between the age of 15-21 years and were followed for 12 years. Nearly 55 percent were addicted to heroin, 35 percent to vicodin and oxycontin, and 10 percent were abusers of both heroin and painkillers.
The participants were divided into two groups, one of extended therapy and the other of short term treatment. During the induction phase one group was administered 12 milligrams of the drug supoxone per day for a period of 9 weeks. They were then gradually taken off the medication by week 12. The second group took the drug in lower dose of 12 milligram per day for only two weeks. Meanwhile both the teams were provided with individual and group counseling.
The urine tests of the patients of long term detox plan showed remarkable progress in the therapy. By the fourth week 26 percent had positive results, as compared to 61 percent recorded in the short term group.
By the eighth week just 23 percent in long term program tested positive for drugs as opposed to 54 percent in the short term plan. At week 12, the rates of both the extended and limited terms were 43 percent and 51 percent respectively.
Long term therapy patients showed more chances of remaining in treatment at week 12 than the detox group: 70 percent vs 20.5 percent.
Another aspect highlighted was that patients in the extended treatment demonstrated a low physical dependence profile in the use of opiate, cocaine, marijuana, injecting drugs and additional treatment outside the study.
Dr David. A Fiellin, associate professor of medicine at Yale University School of Medicine, says, “Most adolescents and young adults initiate their drug use early on, prior to the age of 23. In 2007, probably 200,000 to 400,000 adolescents were playing with these medications, taking them in a way that was not appropriate, and a fair number of those individuals will become dependant or addicted.”
The number of teenagers succumbing to opiates and prescription drugs is alarming. Nearly 3 percent eighth graders, 7 percent tenth graders and 10 percent twelfth graders are victims of substance abuse.
Dr Fiellin states, “What this study shows is that these young patients do better when they are on a buprenorphine-naloxone for an extended period.”
The findings were published in the Journal of American Medical Association.
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