1. Gut Motility and Transit Changes in Patients Receiving Long-Term Methadone Maintenance
- Author
-
Michael O'Connor, Joseph F. Foss, Jonathan Moss, Chun-Su Yuan, and Michael F. Roizen
- Subjects
Adult ,Male ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Methadone maintenance ,Chromatography, Gas ,Constipation ,Gastroenterology ,Statistics, Nonparametric ,Lactulose ,Internal medicine ,medicine ,Humans ,Pharmacology (medical) ,Transit (astronomy) ,Gastrointestinal Transit ,Pharmacology ,medicine.diagnostic_test ,business.industry ,digestive, oral, and skin physiology ,Middle Aged ,Opioid-Related Disorders ,Breath Tests ,Opioid ,Toxicity ,Female ,medicine.symptom ,Gastrointestinal Motility ,business ,Hydrogen breath test ,Methadone ,Hydrogen ,medicine.drug - Abstract
This study was conducted to survey gut motility and transit in 19 volunteers receiving methadone maintenance who were opioid-dependent, and to measure the oral-cecal transit time in these individuals using the lactulose hydrogen breath test. None of these patients reported constipation problems before use of illicit drugs. During current long-term methadone therapy, 58% of patients experienced some degree of constipation, and two of these 19 patients reported that constipation was a very serious problem. Mean +/- standard deviation (SD) oral-cecal transit time in these individuals was 159+/-49.2 minutes, which is significantly longer than the transit time recorded in two previous studies of healthy volunteers (P < 0.01). These results indicate that tolerance to opioids does not appear to extend to gastrointestinal motility and transit. It seems that patients receiving long-term methadone therapy are a good model for use in evaluating gastrointestinal effects of opioid antagonists.
- Published
- 1998