Are There Any Studies of Data on Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) and Opioids?
I understand LDN does not have opioid receptor antagonism because of the cause of interaction between standard dose Naltrexone and oral opioid medications. Are you aware of any studies of data on safety of LDN with patients on maintenance opioid therapy or for topical LDN use in patients on opioids?
So it's been my experience that even Low Dose Naltrexone can immediately cause withdrawal from opioids. It does blockade opioid receptors but the good news is if your patient is only using a short-acting opioid and you separate it far enough away from the Low Dose Naltrexone dosage you could get by with probably one dose of a short acting opioid breakthrough medication. It's not going to be possible if you're using a long-acting opioid product, the oxy products or the long-acting products because the window to use the LDN is not big enough.
It's a five to six hour window where you're going to see the peak levels occur in a three to four hour blockade . Of course you're probably going to have to have at least one more half-life after that in order to see the decline go down to the point where the opioids would still be functional. It's kind of a limited response. It certainly is not going to be doable with any kind of a long-acting opioid or a drug that has a fairly long half-life like Methadone for example. I don’t think that would be possible at all.Maybe others have better experience with this but that's been my experience so far.