Sarah M. Bagley MD, MSc Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics Director, CATALYST Clinic Boston University School of Medicine/Boston Medical Center Boston, MA

Urine Tests Useful in Primary Care Monitoring of Opioid and Cocaine Use

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Sarah M. Bagley MD, MSc Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics Director, CATALYST Clinic Boston University School of Medicine/Boston Medical Center Boston, MA

Dr. Bagley

Sarah M. Bagley MD, MSc
Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics
Director, CATALYST Clinic
Boston University School of Medicine/Boston Medical Center
Boston, MA

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: Urine drug testing is a routine part of the management of primary care patients with opioid use disorder treated with medications such as buprenorphine. In addition, most providers also ask patients about recent drug use.

The point of this study was to see the agreement between the urine drug testing and what patients told a nurse and whether that changed the longer a patient was in treatment. We found that truthful disclosure of opioid and cocaine use increased with time in treatment and that urine drug tests are a useful tool to monitor patients. 

MedicalResearch.com: What should readers take away from your report?

Response: Although urine drug testing is important, we still don’t know how often we should test. This is important as more patients are treated in primary care and urine drug testing can be costly. 

MedicalResearch.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this work?

Response: We really need more information about which protocols would be most helpful- most importantly from a patient perspective but also in terms of cost.

Disclosures: The development of this article was supported by NIDA Grant R25DA013582 and NIDA R25DA033211. Dr. Bagley is supported by NIDA Grant 1K23DA044324-01. Dr. Bagley received the American Society of Addiction Medicine/Millennium Research Institute Fellowship Award that that funded travel to present this work at College on Problems of Drug Dependence in 2014. The opinions, however, are those of the authors and do not reflect the official positions of NIDA, the federal government, ASAM, or the Millennium Research Institute. 

Citation: Sarah M. Bagley, Debbie M. Cheng, Michael Winter, Daniel P. Alford, Colleen LaBelle, Alexander Y. Walley, Jeffrey H. Samet. Opioid and cocaine use among primary care patients on buprenorphine—Self-report and urine drug tests. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2018; 192: 245 DOI: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2018.08.010 

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Last Updated on January 3, 2019 by Marie Benz MD FAAD