Efficacy of buprenorphine and clonidine in opioid detoxification: A hospital- based study

The need for effective and accepted method for opioid detoxification is ever increasing. Sublingual buprenorphine and oral clonidine have been effective in opioid detoxification. As often, there is a great variation in the dosage of buprenorphine and clonidine prescribed by the clinicians; hence, there is a felt need to find an effective dosage for a favorable outcome of opioid detoxification.

The objective of this study was to compare the effectiveness of different doses of sublingual buprenorphine and clonidine in opioid detoxification.

A total of 100 patients with the diagnosis of opioid dependence as per the international classification of diseases-10 criteria were recruited for this study. Participants were assigned randomly into four groups - low-dose clonidine, high-dose clonidine, low-dose sublingual buprenorphine, and high sublingual dose buprenorphine using a computer-generated random number table, resulting in 25, 26, 23, and 26 patients in each group, respectively.

The four groups had comparable scores on all the items of "stages of change readiness and treatment eagerness scale" for the assessment of motivation at baseline. Progressive decrease in withdrawal score was seen in all the groups on "clinical opiate withdrawal scale" and "subjective opiate withdrawal scale."

From the current study, we can infer that both low and high doses of buprenorphine and clonidine are comparable regarding controlling withdrawal.