NY Times on the Dark Side of Buprenorphine

A very long article in the New York Times this morning examines both the benefits and considerable adverse consequences of using buprenorphine to treat opiate addiction. The piece points out that although many people have not heard of buprenorphine, its $1.55 billion in U.S. sales last year topped even the figures for Viagra. And with the Affordable Care Act set to expand treatment for drug addiction, problems with buprenorphine profiteering, diversion and overdose seem likely to get much worse. The availability of a sublingual dissolvable strip from of the drug has led to inventive ways of hiding and smuggling doses. A prison official in Kentucky told the Times that “[i]t’s such a thin strip they’ll put it in the Holy Bible, let it melt and eat a page right out of the good book.” Buprenorphine — a partial agonist at the opioid μ receptors as well as a κ receptor antagonist — is used to treat pain and opiate addiction as an alternative to methadone. Although it is thought to exhibit a “ceiling effect” on respiratory depression and thus be safer than methadone, deaths associated with buphenorphine have been reported in adults. In Suboxone and Zubsolv, buprenorphine is combined with naloxone to discourage intravenous abuse. The drug Subutex contains buprenorphine only, without any naloxone. The Times piece does not do a very good job of putting the problems with buprenorphine in perspective, or comparing the number of overdose de...
Source: The Poison Review - Category: Toxicology Authors: Tags: Medical abuse buprenorphine diversion new york times overdose suboxone subutex zubsolv Source Type: news