Photo Credit: Igoriss

A study published in JAMA Psychiatry suggests that a new prediction model for opioid treatment may help detect a return to opioid risk within 3 weeks of treatment. No current model exists that allows clinicians to predict return rates among patients with opioid use disorder in the early stages of treatment. Sean X Lou, MD, PhD, and colleagues developed predictive models for return to use defined as 4 consecutive weeks of urine drug screen (UDS) results either missing or positive for nonprescribed opioids at 12 weeks. The researchers found an initial area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of 0.67. The addition of urine drug screens in the first 3 weeks improved performance to AUROC 0.82. A simplified score effectively stratified relapse risk in the 3 weeks after treatment initiation, showing a 13% risk of return to use compared with 85% for those with 3 weeks of testing positive for opioids or missing UDS results. The researchers suggest the model may be universal and stress the importance of intervention during this early treatment period.