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Abeed Sarker in Emory’s Department of Biomedical Informatics has a paper in Clinical Toxicology focusing on the phenomenon of “precipitated withdrawal,” in collaboration with emergency medicine specialists from Penn, Rutgers and Mt Sinai.
Precipitated withdrawal is a more intense form of withdrawal that can occur when someone who was using opioids starts medication-assisted treatment with buprenorphine – and also when someone receives naloxone for an overdose.
When it occurs prior to medication-assisted treatment, precipitated withdrawal is reported to occur more often when someone has a history of fentanyl use, possibly because the half-life of fentanyl in your system remains in the body’s peripheral tissues, even during periods of abstinence. The buprenorphine washes out remaining fentanyl or its relatives quickly, leading to symptoms such as diarrhea and vomiting, and sometimes to dehydration and hospitalization.
“From Reddit, we have found that people who use opioids had been talking about it [precipitated withdrawal] for a couple of years now and they have, as a community, come up with their own self-management strategies,” Sarker says.
The strategies are based on microdosing; one approach is called the “Bernese method.”
“These findings are important because this cohort is very difficult to follow, and therefore studying causes and solutions to precipitated withdrawal after buprenorphine initiation is challenging,” Sarker says. “We are essentially trying to give people who use opioids a voice.”
