[Risk factors associated with continued heroin use during methadone maintenance treatment in Guizhou province, China].
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the proportion of methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) clients continuing to use heroin and to explore its associated risk factors.


METHODS
All 1003 heroin addictive patients were recruited from eight MMT clinics in Guizhou province and followed up for 14 months. During the 14 months, each MMT client received random urine tests. MMT clinics, gender, marital status, employment, ethnicity, religion, previous drug using method, having a history being in detoxification program, age, methadone dosage, education level and length of drug use were treated as potential predicting variables into the GEE model.


RESULTS
The average age of the 1003 clients was (33.3 +/- 6.1) years old, the average length of drug use was (8.0 +/- 4.0) years, and the average daily methadone dosage was (38.0 +/- 16.6) mg. Among the 1003 clients, 26.0% were female drug users, 15.5% were divorced and 35.8% had a full time job. The rate of positive urine samples was approximately 30% for the first 10 months of follow-up, after which the positive rate decreased. The model found that different MMT clinics, the average daily methadone dosage (RR = 0.98, P = 0.003), treatment duration (RR = 0.95, P = 0.029) and years of education (RR = 0.94, P = 0.014) were associated with patients positive urine test.


CONCLUSIONS
Continued heroin use was common in MMT clinics in Guizhou province; increasing the dosage of methadone and the duration in the treatment program might decrease the continued use of heroin among clients in MMT clinics.
Liu
En-wu
EW
National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing 100050, China. enwuliu@126.com
Wu
Zun-you
ZY
Liang
Tao
T
Shen
Li-mei
LM
Zhong
Hua
H
Wang
Bing
B
Roger
Detels
D
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000553:Ambulatory Care; D002681:China / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D006556:Heroin Dependence / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008691:Methadone / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D012307:Risk Factors; D012309:Risk-Taking; D055815:Young Adult
D008691:Methadone