Opioid substitution treatment has been studied extensively in industrialized countries, but there are relatively few studies in developing/transitional countries. The aim of this study was to examine the effectiveness of opioid substitution treatment (OST) in less resourced countries.
Longitudinal cohort study.
Purposively selected OST sites in Asia (China, Indonesia, Thailand), Eastern Europe (Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine), the Middle East (Iran) and Australia.
Seven hundred and twenty-six OST entrants.
Participants were interviewed at treatment entry, 3 and 6 months. Standardized instruments assessed drug use, treatment history, physical and psychological health, quality of life, criminal involvement, blood-borne virus (BBV) risk behaviours and prevalence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis C.
Participants were predominantly male, aged in their early 30s and had attained similar levels of education. Seroprevalence rates for HIV were highest in Thailand (52%), followed by Indonesia (28%) and Iran (26%), and lowest in Australia (2.6%). Treatment retention at 6 months was uniformly high, averaging approximately 70%. All countries demonstrated significant and marked reductions in reported heroin and other illicit opioid use; HIV (and other BBV) exposure risk behaviours associated with injection drug users (IDU) and criminal activity, and demonstrated substantial improvement in their physical and mental health and general wellbeing over the course of the study.
OST can achieve similar outcomes consistently in a culturally diverse range of settings in low- and middle-income countries to those reported widely in high-income countries. It is associated with a substantial reduction in HIV exposure risk associated with IDU across nearly all the countries. Results support the expansion of opioid substitution treatment.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 21. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 23 September 2024.
All research outputs
#2,180,968
of 33,732,945 outputs
Outputs from Addiction
#1,513
of 6,765 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#5,815
of 133,353 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Addiction
#14
of 71 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 33,732,945 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 93rd percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 6,765 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 30.6. This one has done well, scoring higher than 77% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 71 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 80% of its contemporaries.
