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WELCOME TO THE In-BOAT STUDY

In-BOAT: A Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) of a Diazepam Maintenance Intervention versus Standard Care of Tapering Diazepam to Reduce Dependent Street Benzodiazepine Use in Adults Receiving Opioid Agonist Treatment (OAT).

What is In-BOAT?

Benzodiazepines are medicines that can be prescribed to help anxiety and sleep problems. However, the use of benzodiazepines with opioid drugs like heroin is common in people who use street drugs. This is linked to the high level of drug related deaths in the UK.

Opioid dependency can be treated safely with opioid agonist treatment (OAT) using methadone or buprenorphine on prescription. However, there is no similar treatment for people who are also dependent on benzodiazepines. This is a problem because street sourced benzodiazepines are being used by people being prescribed OAT. This increases risk of harm and affects their progress in treatment.


The In-BOAT study will include people who are 18 or over, are being treated with OAT and who are at risk from street benzodiazepines. The study will test whether providing a steady supply of a prescribed diazepam (a type of benzodiazepine), along with additional support, will reduce the use of street benzodiazepines by participants. Everyone in the study will continue with their OAT treatment.

People who agree to take part in the In-BOAT study will be randomly allocated to one of these two groups:

The intervention group. People in this group will be prescribed a steady dose of diazepam alongside extra support to address why people use benzodiazepines (e.g. anxiety, trauma, sleep problems and pain). The support also includes safety and harm reduction information to make people aware of the risks of street benzodiazepines.

The standard care group. People in this group will be prescribed diazepam, with the aim of gradually reducing the dose to zero over a 6 month period. They will have access to standard support available in their local service to treat street benzodiazepine use.
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Study news

Recruitment

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Trial sites

Latest addition to sites:

NHS Tayside

Key contacts

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Organisation

Funding acknowledgement

The project is funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment (HTA) programme (reference NIHR163461) and run by the University of Stirling. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily those of the NHS, the local service providers in England, the NIHR or the Department of Health & Social Care.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - Participant Information

The University of Stirling is the sponsor for this study based in the United Kingdom. We will be using information from you and your medical records in order to undertake this study and, together with the University of Aberdeen, will act as the data controller for this study. This means that we are responsible for looking after your information and using it properly. The University of Stirling and University of Aberdeen will keep identifiable information about you for at least 10 years after the study has finished.

Your rights to access, change or move your information are limited, as we need to manage your information in specific ways in order for the research to be reliable and accurate. If you withdraw from the study, we will keep the information about you that we have already obtained. To safeguard your rights, we will use the minimum personally-identifiable information possible.

You can find out more about how we use your information under Data Protection/GDPR | About | University of Stirling. You can also review the University of Aberdeen Privacy Notice at Your Privacy | About | The University of Aberdeen.