Heroin Maintenance: SALOME Trials Set to Begin in Vancouver

In the Chronicle's review of the top international drug policy stories of the year [8] last week, the slow spread of heroin maintenance was in the mix. This week, it's back in the news, with word that a new Canadian heroin maintenance study in Vancouver is about to get underway.

The Study to Assess Longer-term Opioid Medication Effectiveness [9] (SALOME) will choose a Downtown Eastside location next month and begin taking applications from potential participants in February, according to a Tuesday press release from the Inner Change Foundation [10], which, along with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, is funding the trial. With selection of participants supposed to last only three weeks, that means SALOME could be underway by March.

SALOME will enroll 322 hard-core heroin addicts -- they must have been using at least five years and failed other treatments, including methadone maintenance -- in a year-long, two-phase study. During the first phase, half will be given injectable heroin (diacetylmorphine) and half will be given injectable Dilaudid® (hydromorphone). In the second phase, half of the participants will be switched to oral versions of the drug they are using.

The comparison of heroin and Dilaudid® was inspired by unanticipated results from SALOME's forerunner, NAOMI [11] (the North American Opiate Medication Study), which began in Vancouver in 2005 and produced positive results in research reviews last year. In NAOMI, researchers found that participants could not differentiate between heroin and Dilaudid®. The comparison of success rate among injection and oral administration users was inspired by hopes of reducing rates of injection heroin use.

SALOME was also supposed to take place in Montreal, but Quebec provincial authorities effectively killed it there by refusing to fund it. SALOME researchers have announced that it will now proceed in Vancouver alone.

With an estimated 5,000 heroin addicts in the Downtown Eastside and a municipal government that has officially embraced the progressive four pillars approach to problematic drug use [12] -- prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and law enforcement -- Vancouver is most receptive to such ground-breaking research. It is also the home of Insite [13], North America's only safe injection site.

The NAOMI and SALOME projects are the only heroin maintenance programs to take place in North America. Ongoing or pilot heroin maintenance programs are underway in Britain, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland.