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No association between craving levels, personality traits, and treatment outcomes in patients with methamphetamine use disorder under deferred prosecution status

Objective: Few studies have examined the outcome predictors in methamphetamine (MA) use disorder patients referred from the justice system. Craving and personality trait, such as novelty seeking (NS) and harm avoidance (HA), have important rôles in developing and sustaining addiction. Therefore, we investigated whether craving severity and personality traits are correlated with the MA use disorder treatment outcomes in those under the deferred prosecution status. Methods: We measured craving levels and personality traits of NS and HA at the beginning of a one-year treatment program for MA use disorder. We monitored urinary MA/amphetamine results during the one-year treatment program. Multiple linear regressions were used to examine the correlation between craving severity, personality traits, and MA use disorder treatment outcomes. Results: We first enrolled 98 patients, but only 56 patients completed the end-of-treatment assessments. We did not find any association between craving severity, personality traits, and MA treatment outcomes in those populations. But we found that age and percentage of positive urine MA/amphetamine results were significantly related to treatment completion (p < 0.05). Higher percentages of positive urine MA/amphetamine results were also significantly associated with shorter treatment duration (p = 0.01). In addition, positive urine results at baseline were significantly associated with higher percentages of positive urine tests in the following treatment course (p = 0.001). Conclusion: Our study data did not find that craving severity and personality traits were associated treatment outcomes in this special population. But urine MA/amphetamine results were more related with completion of programs. Further studies to evaluate the treatment outcomes and other potential outcome predictors in those were referred from the justice system are needed.