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Maintenance buprenorphine for adults, but tapers for teens: Why?
Author(s) -
Knopf Alison
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
the brown university child and adolescent behavior letter
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1556-7575
pISSN - 1058-1073
DOI - 10.1002/cbl.30178
Subject(s) - buprenorphine , methadone , medicine , methadone maintenance , opioid , opioid use disorder , psychiatry , receptor
In an age of opioid use disorders and more than 70 overdose deaths a day from opioids in the United States, adolescents are usually not given the treatment that is recommended for adults: maintenance with an agonist medication (buprenorphine or methadone). Since methadone is only dispensed in opioid treatment programs (OTPs) and most states require patients to have been dependent on opioids for at least a year, buprenorphine, which is approved for ages 16 or older, is an obvious choice. For a variety of reasons, buprenorphine maintenance for adolescents can be viewed as more of an innovation than a practice. In particular, maintenance with the medications is apparently not even under consideration, with various taper lengths being done instead, despite research showing that tapers end with more than nine out of ten patients relapsing.