This summer, a Penn research team will travel to China to determine whether a drug that relieves heroin withdrawal symptoms can also be the stepping stone in a new effort to cure HIV.
Penn Director of the HIV/AIDS Prevention Research Division David Metzger said that this one-year program plans to test a new approach to treating heroin addiction. The method will utilize a drug called Suboxone along with a full year of drug counseling.
The goal of the program is to show that the use of Suboxone can reduce risk behaviors and can also have a sustained effect on preventing new HIV infections.
Suboxone is a partial opiate that relieves withdrawal symptoms and blocks the effects of any new opiates that the subject might take for the next few days after its injection, explained Metzger.
Although Suboxone is more expensive than some other treatments, such as Methadone, researchers say that it is safer and more effective for users. It is easier to withdraw from than other drugs that have been used in treatments, and a number of possible painful side effects discourage abuse.
Methadone "basically relieves people's withdrawal symptoms and they can go about living their normal lives, but they need to keep taking the medication every day," said Metzger. He added that while the effects of Suboxone are the same as those of other similar drugs, it only needs to be administered three times a week.
While the endeavor in China is set to begin late this summer or early this fall, Metzger and his colleagues have already embarked on a similar effort in Thailand that has thus far recieved positive results.
"The participants are actively participating in both treatment arms," he said. "The drug counseling is being favorably reviewed by both the participants and the staff . There have been no unanticipated problems."
However, Metzger added that it has proved more difficult to set up these programs in Thailand and China than it would have been in the U.S.
He explained that while both the drug and HIV epidemics occurred around the same time, neither occurred that long ago in either Thailand or China. He added that there is "no real infrastructure yet" to deal with either problem.
As a result, Metzger and his team have had to set up drug-treatment programs from scratch.
Metzger hopes that this study will not only speed up the development process for drug treatment, but will also have an impact on public policy regarding the treatment procedures in the countries hit the hardest.
"I feel there is kind of an ethical imperative to be in the places where the epidemic is most severe," he said.
Metzger and his team are currently working with community agencies to make their materials and training available to the community at large.
"I would hope that this study will lead to the actual implementation of an expansion of the drug treatment systems in China," he said. "We want to provide them with a model that we can have confidence actually works."
