This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (34)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Methadone is used as a maintenance treatment for opiate addiction. A linear relationship with a good correlation coefficient (n=31, r=0.82, P<.001) has been calculated between methadone dose and methadone concentrations in plasma.¹ Methadone is marketed as a mixture (50:50) of 2 enantiomers called (R)-methadone and (S)-methadone, but (R)-methadone accounts for nearly all of the opioid effects of racemic methadone.² We have developed a stereospecific analytical method that allows measurement of the concentrations of (R)-methadone and (S)-methadone.³ It was used to determine the (R)-methadone and (S)-methadone trough concentrations in the serum or plasma samples from 50 addicts receiving racemic methadone therapy in steady-state conditions.

Patients and Methods

Twenty-five patients treated in our addiction ward (Lausanne, Switzerland) and 25 patients from a clinical study in Essen, Germany³ were included. Patients were treated with various doses of racemic methadone, but with an unchanged dose for at least 7 days. Methadone was administered once daily . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Results

Comment


CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Drug-Induced Long QT Syndrome in Injection Drug Users Receiving Methadone: High Frequency in Hospitalized Patients and Risk Factors.
Ehret et al.
Arch Intern Med 2006;166:1280-1287.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

A survey of methadone prescribing at an inner-city drug service and a comparison with national data
Dunn
Psychiatr. Bull. 2003;27:167-170.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT