Effect of light needle in the treatment of opioid use disorder: A protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Opioid use disorder occurs worldwide and creates an increasing economic burden and public health crisis. Some problems are associated with using opioid agonists; therefore, there is a need to develop non-opioid treatments to improve acute and long-term opioid withdrawal syndromes.

We will enroll 100 participants with opioid use disorders receiving methadone maintenance treatment at an addiction treatment center and randomly allocate them to an experimental or control group. The experimental group will receive 12 sessions of light needle therapy within 4 weeks, while the control group will receive sham light needle treatment without any laser output. Urinary morphine levels were assessed before and after treatment. Participants will be asked to self-report their number of episodes or days of heroin use and heroin craving/refusal to use heroin in the previous week before and after treatment on a visual analogue scale score of 0 to 10. Quality of life will be reported using the Short Form-12v2 before and after 4 weeks of treatment. Pulse diagnosis and heart rate variability will be evaluated before and after treatment. Baseline patient characteristics will be compared between the groups using the independent t test and the χ2 test. Data between the 2 groups will be compared using generalized estimation equations, and paired t tests.

This study aims to investigate the effect of adjuvant light needle therapy in patients with opioid use disorder on methadone maintenance treatment.