Trial reportThe International journal on drug policy2025
Prescribing methadone in prison predicts linkage to HIV care after release from prison: A randomized and patient preference trial.
Trial report in The International journal on drug policy, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 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.
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
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Partially randomized preference trials in carceral health research: a methodology to advance equity and inclusion.Trials · 2026Article
- Exploring multi-level barriers and human-centered solutions to expand methadone for HIV prevention among people who inject drugs in Kyrgyzstan.Journal of substance use and addiction treatment · 2026Article
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
purposeThe transition from prison is hazardous, especially for people with HIV and opioid use disorder. To determine the impact of methadone on linkage to HIV care in people with HIV and opioid use disorder, we prospectively compared those allocated to pre-release methadone or not.
methodsA prospective, open-label trial of 310 people with HIV and opioid use disorder at Malaysia's largest prison were allocated to pre-release methadone up to 24 weeks before release or not by randomization (n = 64) or preference (n = 246); 296 were included in the final analytical sample. Directed acyclic graphing was used to theorize the relationship between pre-release methadone and post-release linkage to HIV care and identify confounding variables. An inverse probability weighted Cox proportional hazards model estimated the impact of pre-release methadone on linkage to HIV care through 360 days after release.
resultsOverall, 218 (73.6 %) of 296 study participants initiated methadone before release. Receiving pre-release methadone significantly predicted linkage to HIV care at all time points through 360 days (aHR = 1.87; 95 % CI 1.15-2.85) after release. The corresponding numbers needed to treat with pre-release methadone for one increased linkage to HIV care at 30 and 360 days were 14 (95 % CI 9.2-62.4) and 5 (95 % CI 3.4-22.0), respectively.
conclusionsWhile treatment with methadone should be available to everyone with opioid use disorder, it should especially be included as part of an HIV treatment-as-prevention strategy for people in prisons, especially by the time of release. It can optimize HIV treatment outcomes by jumpstarting the HIV treatment cascade.
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