Association of opioid agonist treatment with all-cause mortality and specific causes of death among people with opioid dependence

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Association of opioid agonist treatment with all-cause mortality and specific causes of death among people with opioid dependence

4 June 2021

By Thomas Santo Jr. et al. / JAMA Psychiatry

The review found that people with opioid dependence were less likely to experience overdose-related, suicide, alcohol-related, cancer, and cardiovascular-related mortality while receiving OAT.

Researchers from the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Behavioural Science and Evaluation at University of Bristol and National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) at UNSW Sydney, and several other global institutions reviewed the relationship between OAT and mortality across type of drug, setting and participant groups from over 700,000 participants, which is six times the number of any other previous review.

The review found that mortality risk was lower for those receiving either buprenorphine or methadone treatment, the two most common forms of OAT for people with opioid dependence.

Lead author, Thomas Santo Jr, PhD candidate at NDARC, said: “People with opioid dependence who receive OAT are not only at lower risk of overdose than those who do not, but also at lower risk of suicide and several other common causes of death.”

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