ArticleLancet regional health. Americas2023
Retention and critical outcomes among new methadone maintenance patients following extended take-home reforms: a retrospective observational cohort study.
Article in Lancet regional health. Americas, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
What it found
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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.
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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.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Daily patterns of opioid and stimulant use and associated risk-behavior outcomes: A cohort study.Addictive behaviors · 2026Article
- Article
- Geographic differences in buprenorphine and methadone prescribing for surgical patients with opioid use disorder.Drug and alcohol dependence reports · 2026Article
- De-implementation of inequitable methadone policy and treatment: lessons learned from COVID-19 to support a more just methadone treatment system in the United States.Frontiers in public health · 2026Review
- Seventeen years of experience: a retrospective cohort analysis of methadone maintenance treatment program patterns in Georgia.Harm reduction journal · 2025Article
- Investigating heterogeneous effects of an expanded methadone access policy with opioid treatment program retention: a Rhode Island population-based retrospective cohort study.American journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Does a take-home dose program result in better patient adherence to methadone? Evidence from Vietnam.Harm reduction journal · 2025Article
- Methadone-involved overdose deaths in urban and rural communities before and after the public health emergency flexibilities for methadone take-home doses.Drug and alcohol dependence reports · 2025Article
- State sequence analysis of daily methadone dispensing trajectories among individuals at United States opioid treatment programs before and following COVID-19 onset.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2025Article
- Treating Opioid Use Disorder and Opioid Withdrawal in the Context of Fentanyl.Annual review of clinical psychology · 2025Review
- Exploration of the multi-level barriers to scaling up methadone for HIV prevention among people who inject drugs in Kazakhstan.Journal of substance use and addiction treatment · 2025Article
- New Synthesis and Pharmacological Evaluation of Enantiomerically Pure (Journal of medicinal chemistry · 2025Article
- Article
- Methadone dosing at New York State opioid treatment programs following initial revisions to federal regulations.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2024Article
- Estimated effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of opioid use disorder treatment under proposed U.S. regulatory relaxations: A model-based analysis.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Background: Approximately 1800 opioid treatment programs (OTPs) in the US dispense methadone to upwards of 400,000 patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) annually, operating under longstanding highly restrictive guidelines. OTPs were granted novel flexibilities beginning March 15, 2020, allowing for reduced visit frequency and extended take-home doses to minimize COVID exposure with great variation across states and sites. We sought to use electronic health records to compare retention in treatment, opioid use, and adverse events among patients newly entering methadone maintenance in the post-reform period in comparison with year-ago, unexposed, controls. Methods: Retrospective observational cohort study across 9 OTPs, geographically dispersed, in the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) Clinical Trials Network. Newly enrolled patients between April 15 and October 14, 2020 (post-COVID, reform period) v. March 15-September 14, 2019 (pre-COVID, control period) were assessed. The primary outcome was 6-month retention. Secondary outcomes were opioid use and adverse events including emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and overdose. Findings: 821 individuals were newly admitted in the post-COVID and year-ago control periods, average age of 38.3 (SD 11.1), 58.9% male. The only difference across pre- and post-reform groups was the prevalence of psychostimulant use disorder (25.7% vs 32.9%, p = 0.02). Retention was non-inferior (60.0% vs 60.1%) as were hazards of adverse events in the aggregate ( Interpretation: Policies allowing for extended take-home schedules were not associated with worse retention or adverse events despite slightly elevated rates of measured opioid use while in care. Relaxed guidelines were not associated with measurable increased harms and findings could inform future studies with prospective trials. Funding: USDHHSNIDACTNUG1DA013035-15.
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