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Record W4412785002 · doi:10.1186/s13722-025-00586-7

Rapid intravenous symptom-inhibiting fentanyl induction (SIFI) to optimize rotation onto oral opioid agonist therapy among individuals who use unregulated fentanyl: protocol for an open-label, single arm clinical trial

2025· article· en· W4412785002 on OpenAlex
Pouya Azar, Martha J. Ignaszewski, Marianne Harris, Zoran Barazanci, James S.H. Wong, Anil R. Maharaj, Nickie Mathew, David B. Hall, Silvia Guillemi, Julie Foreman, Rolando Barrios, Julio Montaner

Why this work is in the frame

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

affAt least one author lists a Canadian institution in the pinned OpenAlex snapshot.
fundA Canadian funder is recorded on the work.

Bibliographic record

VenueAddiction Science & Clinical Practice · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicOpioid Use Disorder Treatment
Canadian institutionsAIDS VancouverProvincial Health Services AuthorityVancouver General HospitalBC Mental Health & Substance Use ServicesUniversity of British Columbia
FundersHealth Canada
KeywordsFentanylMedicineOpioid use disorderMethadoneOpioidClinical trialProtocol (science)AnesthesiaMethadone maintenanceAdverse effectIntensive care medicinePharmacologyInternal medicineAlternative medicine

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

BACKGROUND: Most opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment guidelines target community medical settings, and the subsequent recommendations were established to prioritize safety and reduce diversion prior to the fentanyl era. For people with OUD who use unregulated fentanyl, slow induction onto opioid agonist therapy (OAT) with gradual dose titration is often ineffective or insufficient for reducing withdrawal symptoms and cravings, thereby hampering engagement and retention in treatment. Given the severe risks associated with continued use of the increasingly toxic unregulated drug supply, new and innovative approaches to the management of OUD are urgently needed. We have developed an alternative induction protocol, using a rapid intravenous symptom-inhibiting fentanyl induction (SIFI) to optimize rotation onto oral OAT. METHODS: An open-label, single arm, prospective pilot clinical trial is being conducted in an outpatient setting to assess the safety, feasibility, and efficacy of a rapid symptom-inhibiting intravenous fentanyl induction protocol to establish starting doses of methadone or sustained-release oral morphine (SROM) based on individual opioid requirements, as a treatment strategy for individuals with OUD who use unregulated fentanyl. The primary outcome is safety, as defined by occurrence of study drug-related adverse events (including but not limited to opioid toxicity and QT interval prolongation) that require intervention during induction and the first 7 days on OAT. Secondary objectives are to determine whether the SIFI protocol will result in use of higher-than-standard starting doses of methadone and SROM, and to determine whether implementation of this protocol will be acceptable to participants and will result in reduced withdrawal symptoms, improved retention, and better long-term outcomes on OAT. DISCUSSION: This is the first study to rapidly and objectively estimate opioid tolerance and use it to calculate individualized starting doses of oral OAT in an outpatient setting among people who use unregulated fentanyl. We predict that starting methadone or SROM with individually-tailored doses will lead to therapeutic target concentrations being achieved quickly, safely, and with good patient satisfaction. This approach has the potential to more effectively and safely initiate OAT, to minimize opioid withdrawal and cravings, and in turn to decrease unregulated fentanyl use and increase retention on life-saving OAT. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT05905367; date of registration: June 15, 2023; latest update posted July 18, 2024. https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05905367 Protocol version: 4.0, April 22, 2024.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.013
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.024
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch, Meta-epidemiology (narrow), Scholarly communication
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Other design · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.748
Threshold uncertainty score1.000

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0130.024
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.002
Science and technology studies0.0010.001
Scholarly communication0.0020.006
Open science0.0010.000
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.257
GPT teacher head0.512
Teacher spread0.255 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it