Does the advent of depot therapy represent a step change in our understanding of opioid use disorder and its treatment?

TY - JOUR

T1 - Does the advent of depot therapy represent a step change in our understanding of opioid use disorder and its treatment?

AU - Roberts, Emmert

AU - Humphreys, Keith

N1 - Funding Information: This work is supported by the corresponding author's Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellowship in Health Care Policy and Practice and grants to Keith Humphreys from the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The views presented here are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the funders. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors. Drug and Alcohol Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs.

PY - 2023/7/31

Y1 - 2023/7/31

N2 - After years of minimal innovation in pharmacotherapeutics, impressive outcomes in the treatment of opioid use disorder are being obtained from a new way of delivering an old medication; long-acting injectable formulations of buprenorphine appear to produce compelling reductions in relapse to illicit opioid use not only during use but also following depot discontinuation. This commentary discusses potential mechanisms behind this observation, asks if the removal of the need for daily oral opioid agonist dosing furthers our understanding of addiction treatment and whether we should therefore consider expanding access to depot formulations.

AB - After years of minimal innovation in pharmacotherapeutics, impressive outcomes in the treatment of opioid use disorder are being obtained from a new way of delivering an old medication; long-acting injectable formulations of buprenorphine appear to produce compelling reductions in relapse to illicit opioid use not only during use but also following depot discontinuation. This commentary discusses potential mechanisms behind this observation, asks if the removal of the need for daily oral opioid agonist dosing furthers our understanding of addiction treatment and whether we should therefore consider expanding access to depot formulations.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85166592265&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/dar.13732

DO - 10.1111/dar.13732

M3 - Comment/debate

SN - 0959-5236

JO - Drug and Alcohol Review

JF - Drug and Alcohol Review

ER -