Treatment for cocaine use may have HIV benefits
Study shows how to achieve best results
While it’s common knowledge that methadone treatment or any treatment that helps people quit injection drug activity can help prevent HIV infection, the impact of cocaine addiction treatment is less commonly understood.
A recent study helps shed light on this intervention strategy by finding an average 40% reduction in HIV risk behavior among cocaine-dependent patients when they are provided with intense outpatient psychosocial treatment.1
"It’s well documented that having methadone maintenance reduces the HIV risk because there’s less needle sharing and injecting," says George E. Woody, MD, member of behavioral health staff at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center and professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
"It is also well known that cocaine dependence is associated with a lot of unprotected sex, so theoretically, cocaine treatment might help reduce HIV risk as well," he explains. "Because of our interest in HIV risk reduction and the relation to treatment, and because HIV money was funding a good chunk of that study, we were interested in it and were obliged to look at the HIV risk behavior of patients."
Investigators examined HIV risk among 487 cocaine-dependent patients, including crack smoking and snorting, in a trial that examined the efficacy of various outpatient psychosocial treatments. This included group drug counseling, group counseling plus individual drug counseling, cognitive therapy, and supportive-expressive therapy. Patients received treatment two to three times per week for six weeks.
The findings showed that the average patient who had been using cocaine — primarily crack — for seven years had a decrease in cocaine use from an average of 10 days per month at baseline to one day per month at six months.
"Across the board, there was a big reduction in cocaine use and associated with that was a reduction in psychiatric symptoms and a reduction in HIV risk behavior — all due to less unprotected sex," Woody says.
"So it looks like this approach was clearly effective to cocaine dependency in this group of patients who were not psychotic or medically ill or on psychotropic medications and who seemed to have some chance of responding to outpatient treatment," he notes.
Reference
1. Woody GE, Gallop R, Lubonsky L, et al. HIV risk reduction in the National Institute on Drug Abuse Cocaine Collaborative Treatment Study. J AIDS 2003; 33(1):82-87.
While its common knowledge that methadone treatment or any treatment that helps people quit injection drug activity can help prevent HIV infection, the impact of cocaine addiction treatment is less commonly understood.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
- Award-winning Medical Content
- Latest Advances & Development in Medicine
- Unbiased Content