“A great part of the tragedy of this opioid crisis is that, unlike in previous such crises America has seen, we now possess effective treatment strategies that could address it and save lives,” Nora Volkow, MD, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, wrote in an editorial accompanying the study (Ann Intern Med 2018 Jun 19). “Yet tens of thousands of people die each year because they have not received these treatments.”

According to the National Institutes of Health–funded study, adults prescribed buprenorphine had a decreased mortality rate of 38%, compared with patients not receiving any medication-assisted treatment over the one-year study period.