NALTREXONE STUDY RELEASE IN FIRING LINE

The State Government has moved to rein in Dr Jon Currie of Westmead Hospital
after he prematurely released the positive findings of his pilot study into
the efficacy of the anti-heroin drug naltrexone.

It is understood Dr Currie's decision to publicise the results of his
one-year study of 168 opiate addicts at a media breakfast yesterday - before
publication and without independent peer review - raised internal concern
among senior Health Department officials, including some members of
Westmead's ethics committee, as well as the State's chief medical officer,
Dr Andrew Wilson.

According to Dr Currie's findings, 60 per cent of drug addicts using
naltrexone were clean after six months on the program. But he has now been
asked to provide a full report of his research so it can be subjected
quickly to the required peer review. This will be undertaken by Dr Wilson
and up to three other independent drug and alcohol specialists and is
expected to be completed over the next two months.

A spokeswoman for Dr Currie said the decision to release the findings
yesterday followed the screening on Tuesday night of No Quick Fix, an ABC TV
documentary following the naltrexone trial.

He delivered his results verbally, she said, and he had published no
findings or statistics because these had not yet been reviewed by his peers:
"The thing is that we could not put a time limit on that - it could be six
weeks or it could be six months." The 12-month Westmead study observed the
effects of rapid opiate detoxification treatment with naltrexone followed by
naltrexone maintenance therapy and counselling.

Naltrexone is a drug which binds to the same receptors that attach to
opiates such as heroin and methadone, thus blocking their effects. However,
it also means that patients become more sensitive to heroin and therefore
more vulnerable to overdose. Four patients who began in the trial but
abandoned treatment later died of overdose.

"Our outcome after approximately six months on the program is that 60 per
cent of people appear non-opiate dependent," Dr Currie told the breakfast.

"It's not a cure for opiate addiction; it's an opportunity to rapidly
experience an opiate-free life and to decide if they like it." The one-year
trial used 168 patients from throughout NSW. It was funded in part by a
$420,000 grant from the State Government and was an observational study,
which means it did not use a control group given alternative treatments so
the results could be compared.

Yesterday, the director of drug and alcohol services at St Vincent's
Hospital, Dr Alex Wodak, said no evidence had yet been presented to
challenge the assumption that naltrexone was at best modestly effective.

"The issue remains that if you want to be taken seriously as a scientist and
want your work to have credibility within your scientific peers, you publish
the work.

"It is true there is an increasing trend towards people having press
conferences immediately prior to reputable journal publication." Most
clinicians and researchers would not take scientific research seriously if
it had been disseminated in a press conference but not a peer-reviewed
scientific journal, he said.