SEATTLE — UW Medicine doctors may have discovered a new treatment for opioid-use disorder that causes fewer withdrawal symptoms than some current treatments.
Their findings were published in JAMA Network Open on Friday, according to the University of Washington Newsroom.
UW doctors worked with the Downtown Emergency Service Center, a nonprofit that helps people experiencing long-term homelessness.
They helped develop and organize the study, which included 95 patients with opioid-use disorder.
The study was able to gain funding by providing the clinical data they analyzed through grants from the King County government and the Pacific Hospital Preservation and Development Authority of King County.
About 80% of participants in the study were unhoused or living in permanent supportive housing.
All research was done through the Opioid Treatment Network that helps bring much-needed care to people in clinics or by meeting patients in shelters, encampments or supportive housing.
Usually, during opioid-use treatment, patients are asked to go through withdrawal symptoms before being given Buprenorphine, a drug used to treat opioid-use disorder.
The new treatment was tested in a study conducted by UW Medicine from September 2024 to January 2025.
Instead, patients were given overlapping doses of buprenorphine without having to go through withdrawal symptoms.
The study found that 75% of participants completed the three-day injection series and 64% returned for a second dose.
“Being able to get someone started on life-saving medication like buprenorphine without the need for an initial period of withdrawal is particularly important for people experiencing homelessness,” said Dr. Jared Klein, associate professor of medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine, at the University of Washington School of Medicine and senior author of the paper. “This study is a significant contribution to the existing literature around novel methods of starting buprenorphine in the era of fentanyl.”