The addiction treatment drug buprenorphine will come under closer scrutiny through a new federal initiative to track the deaths of opiate addicts taking it or methadone.
U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration officials hope the new tracking system will significantly improve the safety and quality of drug treatment for more than 400,000 addicts across the country, including thousands in Baltimore.
A series of articles published in The Sun in December showed that while buprenorphine can be a highly effective addiction medicine, misuse of the drug is on the rise. Some people have died when taking buprenorphine with other drugs. But the number of deaths is unknown, because medical examiners in Maryland and most other states don't test for buprenorphine in overdose deaths.
Federal officials disclosed the data collection effort in a Jan. 2 notice in the Federal Register. Drug treatment programs will be asked to voluntarily report information about deaths.
The system will help policymakers identify "preventable causes of deaths, and ultimately take appropriate action to minimize risk and help improve the quality of care," according to the notice.
"We're doing this to get a better handle on any trends," Nick Reuter, a senior public health analyst with SAMHSA, said yesterday. "There's no central repository for that information."
Health officials stress that both methadone and buprenorphine are safe when taken properly and help ease cravings addicts feel for opiates. Using illegal drugs such as heroin or cocaine poses far greater dangers of death or injury, they say.
Methadone has been the nation's mainstay addiction therapy since the 1970s. It is dispensed by about 1,100 clinics to roughly 250,000 people nationwide. To stem abuses, methadone clinics initially require addicts to appear daily for their doses. About 60 percent of the methadone clinics also use buprenorphine for some patients, according to Reuter.
While reliable national figures are difficult to obtain, some states have tied an alarming overdose death toll to methadone. Medical examiners in Florida, for instance, reported that the drug caused 312 deaths in the first six months of 2006 alone, more than any other drug.
Many drug treatment experts believe the vast majority of patients who have died from methadone overdoses were taking the drug for pain and often took it with other drugs.
