Could This Treatment Drug Have Saved Prince?
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If there is a speck of silver lining to be found in the abrupt passing of Prince, it’s the attention being paid to buprenorphine (brand name Suboxone), a drug used to treat opioid addiction that, according to local press reports, Prince’s representatives sought from a Bay Area doctor the day before his death.
The music icon died before he could be given what data suggests is one of the most effective treatments for opioid addiction, coming in close second to methadone.
“Overwhelmingly, studies show that Suboxone saves lives by decreasing lethal overdoses, reduces the transmission of HIV and Hepatitis by decreasing the use of dirty needles, and decreases the legal consequences associated with illicit opioid use,” said Luis Giuffra, MD/PhD, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis.
Dr. Guiffra is also the medical director at Clayton Behavioral, a clinic in St. Louis that utilizes buprenorphine to treat opioid addiction. Despite the facts Dr. Guiffra cites, and the success he sees with patients every day, there is a strangely ideologicalstigma attached to buprenorphine’s use.
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