Tapering and withdrawing opioids: guidance informed by fundamental principles to minimise withdrawal symptoms

Formal guidelines recommend that opioids should be stopped when risks outweigh benefits. These guidelines generally recommend gradual dose tapering at a rate tolerable to the patient. However, there is considerable variation regarding the pattern of dose tapering recommended, with some suggesting linear tapers (with a fixed reduction of dose at each step), while others recommend increasingly small dose reductions as the total dose gets lower. No biological rationale has been put forward for these recommendations. We examined the pharmacodynamic properties of opioids to derive pharmacologically rational principles for tapering. As dictated by the law of mass action, the relationship between dose of opioid and effect on its principal target, the mu-opioid receptor, is hyperbolic, with diminishing incremental effects for increasing doses. This suggests that in order to mitigate withdrawal symptoms, opioid doses should be tapered according to a corresponding hyperbolic pattern, with dose reductions becoming increasingly small as total dose reduces. This can be approximated by proportional decreases (e.g. 1%-10% reduction of the most recent dose every 1-2 weeks). Dose reductions should be titrated to withdrawal symptoms throughout the process, and final doses before complete cessation will need to be very small (such as 0.1 mg of buprenorphine or 1 mg of methadone, or less). The duration required for this strategy of tolerable tapering after long-term use may require many months or years for some patients. The theoretical proposals in this paper offer a pharmacologically rational strategy that should prompt review of clinical practice and guidelines. Gradual, hyperbolic tapering should be evaluated in randomised controlled trials.