Long-acting buprenorphine with Jo Neale

Professor Joanne Neale talks to Addiction Audio about her latest research into how people feel during the first 72 hours of having long-acting buprenorphine (Buvidal). Jo talks about the recent history of this medication and how it predated the COVID-19 pandemic and was then brought to attention because it meant that people did not have to attend a pharmacy on a daily basis. Jo also talks about how this can be positive for some people but isn't appropriate for everyone.

Jo discusses the gap in the literature around how people respond to long-acting buprenorphine when it is first administered. Jo presents data from the first wave of a longitudinal study examining people's experiences throughout the medication. The findings from this first set of data will be used to help people prepare for the effects and to know what to expect.

Jo discusses using an embodiment and embodied cognition approach when analysing the data. This was chosen because the researchers saw how the data quickly became complex.

"People had these positive and negative experiences at the same time simultaneously; sometimes they were positive physical effects, sometimes they were positive psychological effects, sometimes they were negative physical effects, sometimes they were negative psychological effects. And when we started to map this out, we could see that it was quite complicated and that everything was interacting. And that brought us round to thinking that the concept of embodiment and embodied cognition are quite helpful here because they help us understand how the mind and body interact."

Original article: How do patients feel during the first 72 h after initiating long-acting injectable buprenorphine? An embodied qualitative analysis by Joanne Neale and colleagues. Published in Addiction (2023)

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