Home > Evaluating comparative effectiveness of psychosocial interventions adjunctive to opioid agonist therapy for opioid use disorder: a systematic review with network meta-analyses.

Rice, Danielle and Corace, Kimberly and Wolfe, Dianna and Esmaeilisaraji, Leila and Michaud, Alan and Grima, Alicia and Austin, Bradley and Douma, Reuben and Barbeau, Pauline and Butler, Claire and Willows, Melanie and Poulin, Patricia A and Sproule, Beth A and Porath, Amy and Garber, Gary and Taha, Sheena and Garner, Gord and Skidmore, Becky and Moher, David and Thavorn, Kednapa and Hutton, Brian (2020) Evaluating comparative effectiveness of psychosocial interventions adjunctive to opioid agonist therapy for opioid use disorder: a systematic review with network meta-analyses. PLoS ONE, 15, (12), e0244401. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244401.

External website: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.13...

BACKGROUND: Guidelines recommend that individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD) receive pharmacological and psychosocial interventions; however, the most appropriate psychosocial intervention is not known. In collaboration with people with lived experience, clinicians, and policy makers, we sought to assess the relative benefits of psychosocial interventions as an adjunct to opioid agonist therapy (OAT) among persons with OUD.

METHODS: A review protocol was registered a priori (CRD42018090761), and a comprehensive search for randomized controlled trials (RCT) was conducted from database inception to June 2020 in MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials. Established methods for study selection and data extraction were used. Primary outcomes were treatment retention and opioid use (measured by urinalysis for opioid use and opioid abstinence outcomes). Odds ratios were estimated using network meta-analyses (NMA) as appropriate based on available evidence, and in remaining cases alternative approaches to synthesis were used.

RESULTS: Seventy-two RCTs met the inclusion criteria. Risk of bias evaluations commonly identified study limitations and poor reporting with regard to methods used for allocation concealment and selective outcome reporting. Due to inconsistency in reporting of outcome measures, only 48 RCTs (20 unique interventions, 5,404 participants) were included for NMA of treatment retention, where statistically significant differences were found when psychosocial interventions were used as an adjunct to OAT as compared to OAT-only. The addition of rewards-based interventions such as contingency management (alone or with community reinforcement approach) to OAT was superior to OAT-only. Few statistically significant differences between psychosocial interventions were identified among any other pairwise comparisons. Heterogeneity in reporting formats precluded an NMA for opioid use. A structured synthesis was undertaken for the remaining outcomes which included opioid use (n = 18 studies) and opioid abstinence (n = 35 studies), where the majority of studies found no significant difference between OAT plus psychosocial interventions as compared to OAT-only.

CONCLUSIONS: This systematic review offers a comprehensive synthesis of the available evidence and the limitations of current trials of psychosocial interventions applied as an adjunct to OAT for OUD. Clinicians and health services may wish to consider integrating contingency management in addition to OAT for OUD in their settings to improve treatment retention. Aside from treatment retention, few differences were consistently found between psychosocial interventions adjunctive to OAT and OAT-only. There is a need for high-quality RCTs to establish more definitive conclusions.


Item Type
Article
Publication Type
International, Open Access, Review, Article
Drug Type
Opioid
Intervention Type
Drug therapy, Treatment method, Psychosocial treatment method, Rehabilitation/Recovery
Date
28 December 2020
Identification #
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244401
Page Range
e0244401
Publisher
Public Library of Science
Volume
15
Number
12
EndNote

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