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To characterize all-cause and overdose mortality risks in individuals on opioid replacement therapy (ORT) for opioid use disorder, authors pooled data from 19 cohort studies that followed people on and off medication treatment (122,885 people on methadone and 15,831 on buprenorphine).
For methadone, mortality risk was greater off medication treatment than on it, and the risk reduction was greater for overdose deaths than for nonoverdose deaths. For buprenorphine, analyses showed a trend toward lower mortality during on-treatment periods. Greater mortality in the first 4 weeks of ORT compared with later ORT periods was observed only for methadone. For both methadone and buprenorphine, however, higher mortality was observed in the first 4 week…