In Norway we offer opioid maintenance treatment with methadone or buprenorphine for people with opioid dependence. For most people who use methadone or buprenorphine the maintenance treatment has a lifelong perspective. We summarized the research on the effect of tapering the dosage of methadone or buprenorphine compared with continued opioid assisted maintenance treatment.

We found only one randomized controlled trial (published in 2015) that evaluated the effect of tapering from methadone. The study was set in the USA and included 223 people who were sentenced to serve a relatively short prison sentence.

The study we found had included too few people. It had high risk of bias due to lack of blinding. We cannot say anything for certain what the effect of tapering methadone is on the use of methadone maintenance treatment, illicit drugs, crime, adverse events such as hospitalization, disease and drug overdose, and mortality. The study did not measure outcomes such as adverse events, user satisfaction or work participation.