Can Benzodiazepines Help Patients Who Take Buprenorphine for Opioid Use Disorder?

Benzodiazepines are commonly abused by individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD) to enhance the “high.” However, many patients with treated OUD are prescribed benzodiazepines for anxiety and insomnia, symptoms that can increase risk for relapse. Benzodiazepines combined with full opioid agonists increase risks for overdose and death, but the risks are unclear when benzodiazepines are used with the mixed opioid agonist-antagonist buprenorphine. To learn more, researchers studied a population-based data warehouse linking records from five Massachusetts agencies on 63,345 adults who received buprenorphine in a 4-year period.

The data indicated that 24% of the sample had filled at least one benzodiazepine prescription while receiving buprenorph…