Doctors will soon be able to prescribe buprenorphine for up to 100 patients with opioid dependence, under legislation passed by Congress on Dec. 8 that more than triples the previous 30-patient prescribing limit, according to a press release from Reckitt Benckiser Pharmaceuticals.*

The legislation amends the Controlled Substances Act to allow individual physicians to treat up to 100 patients with buprenorphine, currently the only drug approved for treatment of opioid dependence in a private doctor's office setting. It now heads to President Bush's desk to be signed into law. The amendment was part a reauthorization bill for the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

"Of the estimated six million people in the United States who are dependent on opioids, many of them have been forced to wait for the medical treatment they so desperately need simply because of a mandated 30-patient 'cap' on how many people a doctor may treat," said Edwin A. Salsitz, MD, of Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. "Enactment of the legislation will begin to address this inequity."

To qualify for the higher prescribing limit, doctors must have been certified to prescribe buprenorphine for at least one year.

The original 30-patient limit per medical practice -- regardless of how many of its doctors were certified to prescibe the drug -- was set by the Drug Addiction Treatment Act of 2000, which for the first time permitted office-based treatment of opiate addiction with Scheduled III-V drugs. Last July, Congress changed the limit to 30 patients per certified physician.**

 * Reckitt Benckiser manufactures and markets buprenorphine under the trade names Suboxone and Subatex.

** Correction, December 12, 2006
When first published,  this summary incorrectly said that the original legislation capped individual doctors at 30 patients. Instead, it effectively capped medical practices at 30 patients; the July 2006 amendment changed that limit to apply to individual physicians.