HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, September 20, 2022 (HealthDay News). A Canadian program shows a way to save lives as it provides safer opioids to high-risk patients.
The conclusion of a study on Canada’s first official “safer opioid supply” (SOS) program. These programs are designed to reduce overdoses and offer vulnerable individuals an alternative to the dangerous street supply of opioids.
The London, Ontario-based program provided daily prescription opioid tablets to clients. It also offered basic health care and counseling.
The researchers discovered that the result was a rapid decline in emergency department visits and hospitalizations among the clients. In six years, there has not been one overdose death.
Thomas Kerr (director of research at British Columbia Centre on Substance Use), Vancouver, Canada said that “I believe this is a landmark investigation.”
Kerr, who did not participate in the study, admitted that SOS programs can be controversial and have critics. There are concerns about opioid pill sales, and people injecting the pills with the potential for overdose.
Kerr stated that critics of a safer supply were made because there was no data.
He said, “The entire conversation has been clouded with misinformation.” “When we are talking about matters of death and life, we cannot rely upon people’s opinions.”
Kerr expressed his hope that the new findings would “mute some of this misinformation.”
The Sept. 19 issue of the journal was published the study. CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal It is a result of an ever-worsening opioid crisis.
The number of opioid overdose deaths in the United States has been increasing for many years. This situation was made worse by the pandemic. In 2020, nearly 92,000 Americans died of a drug overdose — largely involving opioids, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Officials say the main cause of the crisis is illegally manufactured versions of fentanyl, which is a synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than heroin. Illicit Fentanyl is available in many forms, including pills that resemble prescription opioids. To increase their potency, it’s often mixed with other illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine. Fentanyl is often not known to users.
Safer supply programs are based on the principle of harm reduction — that overdoses, infections and other consequences of opioid addiction can be prevented, without requiring people who misuse drugs to be completely abstinent.
These findings were made possible by a 2016 London InterCommunity Health Centre program. It provides clients with hydromorphone (Dilaudid) tablets, dispensed daily, as well as many other services — including primary health care, treatment for infections like HIV and hepatitis C, counseling, and help with housing and other social services.
Tara Gomes from Unity Health Toronto was the researcher and she looked at data about all 94 clients who were enrolled in this program between 2016 – March 2019. They compared the 82 participants to the program with the 303 people who were not diagnosed with opioid addiction.
The study showed that program clients had fewer hospitalizations and emergency room visits over a year than the control group. And while clients had medication costs — covered by Ontario’s prescription drug plan — their yearly health care costs outside of primary care plunged: from about $15,600, on average, to $7,300.
There was no significant change in the comparison group.
Associate Professor at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn. Dr. Sandra Springer has contributed to the American Society of Addiction Medicine’s practice guidelines.
Springer, who did not participate in the research, said that this study was further proof that programs that meet patients right where they are and provide easy accessibility to care for opioid abuse disorder can save more lives as well as lower health care costs.
Opioid dependency can be treated using medication-assisted therapies, which include counseling and medications such buprenorphine (methadone), naltrexone, and methadone.
Springer pointed out that, while this SOS program was not able to provide traditional medication for opioid abuse disorder treatment to all participants it did offer these medications to those who were eligible.
She said that other research has shown people who abuse drugs are more likely to accept evidence-based treatment if they are offered compassionate care.
We will continue to monitor the spread of SOS programs. Health Canada has announced funding for several pilot programs in 2020. And last year, New York City opened two overdose prevention sites — where people with opioid addiction can use the drugs in a clean, supervised setting, and be connected with health care and social services.
These sites are the first to be publicly identified as overdose prevention centers in America.
Kerr stated that the status quo is inadequate in an opioid crisis that is only getting worse.
He stated, “We must try new approaches” and “scientifically evaluate them.”
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The U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse offers more information on opioid use disorder.
SOURCES – Thomas Kerr, PhD director, British Columbia Centre on Substance Use, Professor, Social Medicine, University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada; Sandra Springer MD associate professor, Medicine, Yale School of Medicine New Haven (Conn.); CMAJ, September 19, 2022, online
