An admission cohort of 296 Australian methadone maintenance patients w
as followed over 15 years. The relative risks of death in and out of m
aintenance were calculated for two age groups, 20-29 and 30-39 years.
Heroin addicts in both age groups were one-quarter as likely to die wh
ile receiving methadone maintenance as addicts not in treatment. This
is because they were significantly less likely to die by heroin overdo
se or suicide while in maintenance. Methadone maintenance had no measu
rable effect on the risk of death through nonheroin overdose, violence
or trauma, or natural causes. A meta-analysis showed the reduction in
overall mortality was consistent with the results of cohort studies c
onducted in the United States, Sweden, and Germany. The combined resul
ts of the five studies again indicated that methadone maintenance redu
ced addicts' risk of death to a quarter, RR 0.25 (95% CI 0.19 to 0.33)
.