Abstract

Background and Objective: drug abuse and drug dependence are complex multi-dimensional problems. Drug addiction is the second leading cause of death after accidents in males. Injecting drug has raised concerns such as transmission of AIDS and hepatitis. Detoxification or therapeutic interventions alone have not had an effect on reducing drug dependence, such as heroin. Oral methadone is a common international method for treatment of the heroin dependence. By removing or reducing complications of drug leaving, methadone reduces heroin dependence. Methadone is effective for 24 hours and can be used instead of heroin with 3 to 5 times of consumption (a long term effect). Therefore, given what was stated above, this study evaluates the effects of methadone on liver and kidney. Methodology: In this comparative study, two group (one group included 100 people and another group included 50 people) were selected from Rudan prison in Hormozgan province using randomized sampling method and they were evaluated. Their liver toxicity was evaluated by measuring Bilirubin, ALT, AST, and ALP of blood in a human model. Results: The results showed the equality of two groups is not rejected in terms of level of AST and ALT at the significance level of 0.05, and after 6-month and 9-month treatment, no difference was found between them, but with regard to the levels of ALP, bilirubin total, and bilirubin total enzyme, the hypothesis of equality of the enzyme is rejected at the significance level of 0.05 given the test level (0.014). After eliminating the pre-treatment variable, it was revealed that the level of enzymes was significantly higher in 9-month treatment period that that of 6-month treatment period. Conclusion: excessive use of methadone can have an adverse effect on liver enzymes. Thus, to prevent poisoning and death caused by its abuse, it is important to accurately measure the concentration of methadone in the blood or urine of the patients.