Background:~Heroin dependence is one of the major health issues worldwide. Methadone Maintenance Therapy (MMT) is an effective treatment for opioid dependence, but more than three quarters of persons receiving MMT report sleep complaints. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is one of the most common complementary therapies offered to insomnia patients in Taiwan. Investigators designed a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy of TCM in methadone-maintained persons with sleep disturbance.~Methods/design:~In this study, inclusion criteria are persons receiving MMT for at least one month, more than 20 years old, complain insomnia with a Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) of six or higher. Exclusion criteria include being pregnancy, had serious physical or mental illness, current use (last 30 days) of TCM, had received any antidepressant or neuroleptic medication and inability to read and fill out the forms for the study. The patients were separated into an intervention group (Suan-Zao-Ren Tang, SZRT) and a placebo group for four weeks using a randomized, double-blind procedure. Outcome measures will be assessed at baseline, 4 weeks and 8 weeks after receiving medication. PSQI was used to assess sleep quality over the past 30 days, anxiety and depression levels measured by the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II) were also conducted, heroin craving degree was evaluated by the change of the visual analog scale (VAS). Serum proteins will be detected using a proteomics method based on two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, and the specificity of proteins will confirmed by western blotting. T-test and chi-square tests are used for statistical analysis.~Discussion:~SZRT is a combination of Semen Zizyphi Spinosae (Suanzaoren), Sclerotium Poriae Cocos (Fuling), Radix Ligustici Chuanxiong (Chuanxiong), Rhizoma Anemarrhena (Zhimu), and Radix Glycyrrhizae (Gancao). It was the most commonly prescribed Chinese herbal formula used for the treatment of insomnia. In the classical literature and previous studies, SZRT was said to calm the nerves and nourish the blood to eventually bring on a tranquillizing sensation and improved the quality of sleep without generating significant side effects. In order to evaluate the efficacy of SZRT for sleep disturbance during methadone maintenance, investigators designed a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial and perform the proteomic-system biology analysis to find the biomarker associated with sleep condition.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of Suan-Zao-Ren Tang in improving sleep quality, anxiety, depression, and heroin craving among methadone-maintained persons with sleep complaints.