PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Physician-pharmacist collaboration may increase adherence to opioid addiction treatment

2021-01-11
(Press-News.org) NIH-supported pilot study found team-based approach may improve buprenorphine care.

WHAT: A collaborative approach to treating opioid use disorder that relies heavily on community pharmacists is feasible and may increase adherence and participant satisfaction, according to a pilot study published today in Addiction. The study was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, through the NIDA Center for the Clinical Trials Network.

Most people with opioid use disorder who would benefit from medication do not receive it. Buprenorphine is a safe and effective medication that has been used in opioid addiction treatment for nearly two decades, but providers must complete training and receive a special waiver in order to prescribe buprenorphine to treat opioid use disorder. In the United States, fewer than 10% of primary care providers are authorized to prescribe buprenorphine, and more than 20 million people in the United States live in a county without a buprenorphine-waivered physician. This lack of access is a significant barrier to treatment, especially to people in underserved communities.

To help address treatment gaps, investigators studied the transfer of care of 71 participants using buprenorphine maintenance therapy for opioid use disorder from waivered physicians to trained community pharmacists. About 90% of people in the United States live within five miles of a community pharmacy.

Researchers from Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, and their collaborators found nearly 89% of participants remained in the study and 95.3% adhered to the daily medication regimen. During the 6-month trial, no opioid-related emergencies or hospitalizations were reported. The proportion of opioid-positive urine drug screens was less than 5% at month 6 among participants who completed all urine drug screens in the study. Participants, physicians, and pharmacists alike reported high rates of satisfaction with the program.

Investigators recruited 71 adults currently receiving office-based buprenorphine treatment for opioid use disorder in the Raleigh-Durham, N.C., area from March to December 2018. Six physicians and six community pharmacists took part in the trial. The initial treatment phase, in which the buprenorphine dose is gradually increased until a satisfactory daily dose is reached, was carried out under the care of a waivered physician. Then, participants attended monthly maintenance visits in which pharmacists dispensed buprenorphine, assessed how well the medication was working, and provided counseling and referrals to specialists as needed. Pharmacists then provided feedback to the partnering physician to adjust buprenorphine dosage as needed.

The researchers concluded that the pilot study offers strong support for advancing physician-pharmacist team-based approaches to leverage the abundant resource of community pharmacies in expanding access to opioid use disorder treatment with buprenorphine. Larger clinical trials are needed to establish strategies and approaches to most effectively implement team-based buprenorphine care and respond to the needs of diverse clinical settings and populations.

INFORMATION:

Article Wu, L-T et al. Buprenorphine physician?pharmacist collaboration in the management of patients with opioid use disorder: Results from a multi-site study of the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network. Addiction. January 11, 2021.

The paper will be available at https://doi.org/10.1111/add.15353.

WHO: Nora Volkow, M.D., director of NIDA, is available for comment.

To learn more about NIDA's National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network, go to NIDA's Clinical Trials Network website: https://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nida/organization/cctn/clinical-trials-network-ctn.

For more information, contact the NIDA press office at media@nida.nih.gov or 301-443-6245. Follow NIDA on Twitter and Facebook.

About the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA): NIDA is a component of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIDA supports most of the world's research on the health aspects of drug use and addiction. The Institute carries out a large variety of programs to inform policy, improve practice, and advance addiction science. For more information about NIDA and its programs, visit http://www.drugabuse.gov.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.

NIH...Turning Discovery Into Health®



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Same difference: predicting divergent paths of genetically identical cells

Same difference: predicting divergent paths of genetically identical cells
2021-01-11
DALLAS - Jan. 11, 2021 - A set of biomarkers not traditionally associated with cell fate can accurately predict how genetically identical cells behave differently under stress, according to a UT Southwestern study. The findings, published by Cell Reports as a Dec. 1 cover story, could eventually lead to more predictable responses to pharmaceutical treatments. Groups of the same types of cells exposed to the same stimuli often display different responses. Some of these responses have been linked to slight differences in genetics between individual cells. However, even genetically identical cells can diverge in ...

Impacts of climate change on our water and energy systems: it's complicated

Impacts of climate change on our water and energy systems: its complicated
2021-01-11
As the planet continues to warm, the twin challenges of diminishing water supply and growing energy demand are intensifying. But because water and energy are inextricably linked, as we try to adapt to one challenge - say, by getting more water via desalination or water recycling - we may be worsening the other challenge by choosing energy-intensive processes. So, in adapting to the consequences of climate change, how can we be sure that we aren't making problems worse? Now, researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), UC Berkeley, and UC Santa Barbara have developed a science-based analytic framework to evaluate such complex connections between water and energy, and options for adaptations in response to an evolving ...

New nanostructured alloy for anode is a big step toward revolutionizing energy storage

New nanostructured alloy for anode is a big step toward revolutionizing energy storage
2021-01-11
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Researchers in the Oregon State University College of Engineering have developed a battery anode based on a new nanostructured alloy that could revolutionize the way energy storage devices are designed and manufactured. The zinc- and manganese-based alloy further opens the door to replacing solvents commonly used in battery electrolytes with something much safer and inexpensive, as well as abundant: seawater. Findings were published today in Nature Communications. "The world's energy needs are increasing, but the development of next-generation electrochemical energy storage systems with high energy density and long cycling life ...

Biomarkers in fathers' sperm linked to offspring autism

2021-01-11
PULLMAN, Wash. - Biomarkers in human sperm have been identified that can indicate a propensity to father children with autism spectrum disorder. These biomarkers are epigenetic, meaning they involve changes to molecular factors that regulate genome activity such as gene expression independent of DNA sequence, and can be passed down to future generations. In a study published in the journal Clinical Epigenetics on Jan. 7, researchers identified a set of genomic features, called DNA methylation regions, in sperm samples from men who were known to have autistic children. Then in a set of blind tests, the researchers were able to use the presence of these features to determine whether other men had fathered autistic children with 90% ...

Study shows meaningful lockdown activity is more satisfying than busyness

2021-01-11
New research shows people who pursue meaningful activities - things they enjoy doing - during lockdown feel more satisfied than those who simply keep themselves busy. The study, published in PLOS ONE, shows you're better off doing what you love and adapting it to suit social distancing, like swapping your regular morning walk with friends for a zoom exercise session. Simply increasing your level of activity by doing mindless busywork will leave you unsettled and unsatisfied. Co-lead researcher Dr Lauren Saling from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia said while novelty lockdown activities - like baking or painting - have their place, trying to continue what you enjoyed before lockdown can be more rewarding. "Busyness might be distracting but it won't necessarily be fulfilling," ...

Latinx low-income workers hardest hit by SF COVID surge

2021-01-11
COVID-19 infections are once again rising at an alarming rate in San Francisco's Latinx community, predominantly among low-income essential workers, according to results of a massive community-based testing blitz conducted before and after the Thanksgiving holiday by Unidos En Salud -- a volunteer-led partnership between the Latino Task Force for COVID-19 (LTF), UC San Francisco , the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub (CZ Biohub), and the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH). Unidos En Salud launched their "Healthy Holidays" initiative the weekend before Thanksgiving (Nov. 22-24) in San Francisco's Mission District, where they have been perfecting their community-based surveillance testing ...

Chloroplasts on the move

Chloroplasts on the move
2021-01-11
The genetic material of plants, animals and humans is well protected in the nucleus of each cell and stores all the information that forms an organism. For example, information about the size or color of flowers, hair or fur is predefined here. In addition, cells contain small organelles that contain their own genetic material. These include chloroplasts in plants, which play a key role in photosynthesis, and mitochondria, which are found in all living organisms and represent the power plants of every cell. But is the genetic material actually permanently stored within one cell? No! As so far known, the genetic material can migrate from cell to cell and thus even be exchanged between different organisms. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology (MPI-MP) ...

Computer scientists: We wouldn't be able to control super intelligent machines

2021-01-11
We are fascinated by machines that can control cars, compose symphonies, or defeat people at chess, Go, or Jeopardy! While more progress is being made all the time in Artificial Intelligence (AI), some scientists and philosophers warn of the dangers of an uncontrollable superintelligent AI. Using theoretical calculations, an international team of researchers, including scientists from the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, shows that it would not be possible to control a superintelligent AI. The study was published in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. Suppose someone ...

Laypeople have difficulty estimating severity of blood loss

Laypeople have difficulty estimating severity of blood loss
2021-01-11
When an accident occurs, the reactions of bystanders are important. Researchers have studied whether laypeople realise the severity of the situation when someone in their proximity begins to bleed, and whether they can estimate how much the person is bleeding. The results show a discrepancy related to the victim's gender: for a woman losing blood, both blood loss and life-threatening injuries were underestimated. The study has been published in the scientific journal PLoS One. Researchers from Linköping University and Old Dominion University in the United States wanted to study the ability of laypeople to visually assess blood loss, and what influences them when judging the severity of an injury. "Laypeople's ...

Are autism drugs on the horizon?

2021-01-11
Recent years have provided substantial research displaying the effect of genetic mu-tations on the development of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Based on those studies, researchers have focused attention on the commonalities be-hind those mutations and how they impact on the functioning of the brain. A study conducted by Professor Sagiv Shifman from the Life Sciences Institute at the He-brew University of Jerusalem and the Center for Autism Research has found that genes associated with autism tend to be involved in the regulation of other genes and to operate preferentially in three areas of the brain; the cortex, the striatum, and the cerebellum. The cerebellum ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Sniffer dogs tested in real-world scenarios reveal need for wider access to explosives, study finds

Ex-smokers who relapse may simply be tired of the effort of not smoking

A better way to monitor drug therapy at home

Rare earth engineering to mitigate corrosion challenges in seawater electrolysis

MXene‑based wearable contact lenses: Integrating smart technology into vision care

Unlocking the power of gold: a breakthrough in green chemistry

Ru-Co single-atom alloy catalysts for efficient amination of alcohols

Biochar shows big promise for climate-friendly soil management

New biochar innovation captures stubborn metal pollutants from water

New blood test shows promise in detecting ALS early

Combination of pre- and probiotics offers superior anti-inflammatory benefits compared with omega-3 or prebiotic alone

Walking, cycling and swimming likely best exercise for knee osteoarthritis

SGLT-2 diabetes drugs linked to lower risk of autoimmune diseases

Imposter study participants risk undermining patient care, warn experts

Ants alter their nest networks to prevent epidemics, study finds

Indian literary genius survived British imperialism in forgotten villages, research reveals

Longevity gene from supercentenarians offers hope for disease that causes rapid aging in children

​​​​​​​Climate change drove extreme wildfire seasons across the Americas, making burned areas around 30 times larger

Gene therapy delivers lasting immune protection in children with rare disorder

New world record set for fastest human whole genome sequencing, representing significant step towards revolutionizing genomic care in the NICU

Shedding light on materials in the physical, biological sciences

Study finds emotional tweets by politicians don’t always win followers and can backfire with diverse audiences

Paul “Bear” Bryant Awards announce 2025 Coach of the Year Award watch list

$3 million National Institute on Aging grant will provide much-needed support to underserved dementia caregivers

Study links obesity-driven fatty acids to breast cancer, warns against high-fat diets like keto

Did lead limit brain and language development in Neanderthals and other extinct hominids?

New study reveals alarming mental health and substance use disparities among LGBTQ+ youth

U.K. food insecurity is associated with mental health conditions

At least eight bat species commute or forage over pig farms in Northern Italy

Ancient teeth reveal mammalian responses to climate change in Southeast Asia

[Press-News.org] Physician-pharmacist collaboration may increase adherence to opioid addiction treatment