ReviewThe International journal on drug policy2019
Lacking evidence for the association between frequent urine drug screening and health outcomes of persons on opioid agonist therapy.
Review in The International journal on drug policy, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Global patterns of opioid use and dependence: harms to populations, interventions, and future action.Lancet (London, England) · 2019Pooled it
- Evaluating risk factors and protective clinical interventions for opioid use disorder and overdose in American Indian/Alaska Native populations.Journal of ethnicity in substance abuse · 2026Article
- Do No Harm? Rethinking Urine Drug Screens in Treatment of Opioid Use Disorder.Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine : JABFM · 2026Article
- "With this you're not chained down to something": contrasting experiences of opioid agonist treatment and safer supply program participation among people receiving prescribed safer supply.Harm reduction journal · 2026Article
- Patient and Provider Perspectives on the Elimination of Urine Drug Testing in Office-Based Addiction Treatment.Substance use & addiction journal · 2026Article
- Comparative effectiveness of urine drug testing schedules alongside opioid agonist treatment: Emulation of a population-based target trial in British Columbia, Canada.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2025Article
- Harm reduction in the fourth wave of the opioid epidemic: A case series investigation of the effectiveness of definitive vs presumptive urine drug testing for opioid use disorder with co-occurring polysubstance use.Harm reduction journal · 2025Article
- Do we need urine drug screens in opioid addiction treatment: An observational study on self-report versus urine drug screens.Addictive behaviors reports · 2025Article
- Exploring the role of urine drug screening in opioid agonist therapy.The Medical journal of Australia · 2025Article
- Opioid risk-reduction strategies for people with HIV on chronic opioid therapy: A qualitative study of patient perspectives.SSM. Mental health · 2024Article
- Practitioner perspectives on working with older patients in opioid agonist treatment (OAT) in Norway: opportunities and challenges.Addiction science & clinical practice · 2024Article
- The Psychiatrist's Role in Treating Perinatal Opioid Use Disorder and Reducing Maternal Mortality.Focus (American Psychiatric Publishing) · 2024Review
- Typology of laws restricting access to methadone treatment in the United States: A latent class analysis.The International journal on drug policy · 2023Article
- Urine Drug Screening in a Telehealth Setting for the Treatment of Opioid Use Disorder.JAMA health forum · 2023Observational
- Deimplementation in the provision of opioid agonist treatment to achieve equity of care for people engaged in treatment: a qualitative study.Implementation science : IS · 2023Article
- Article
- Between Care and Control: Examining Surveillance Practices in Harm Reduction.Contemporary drug problems · 2023Article
- Validation and endorsement of health system performance measures for opioid use disorder in British Columbia, Canada: A Delphi panel study.Drug and alcohol dependence reports · 2022Article
- Article
- Treatment retention, return to use, and recovery support following COVID-19 relaxation of methadone take-home dosing in two rural opioid treatment programs: A mixed methods analysis.Journal of substance abuse treatment · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundOpioid agonist therapy (OAT) is a first-line treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD); however, the efficacy and role of urine drug screening (UDS) in OAT has received little research attention. Prior evidence suggests that UDS frequency reflects philosophy and practice context rather than differences in patient characteristics or clinical need. Therefore, we reviewed the literature on the effect of and recommendations for the frequency of UDS on health outcomes for persons with OUD who receive OAT.
methodsWe searched Medline and EMBASE for articles published from 1995-2017. Search results underwent double, independent review with discrepancies resolved through discussion with a third reviewer, when necessary. Additional articles were identified through snowball searching, hand searching (Google Scholar), and expert consultation. The Cochrane tool was used to assess risk of bias.
resultsOf the 60 potentially eligible articles reviewed, only one three-arm randomized open-label trial, comparing weekly and monthly UDS testing with take-home OAT doses, met our inclusion criteria.
conclusionsOur review identified an urgent gap in research evidence underpinning an area of clinical importance and that is routinely reported by patients as an area of concern.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.