This study will assess the safety of changing pain medications (opioids) adult sickle cell patients take to another type of medication therapy (buprenorphine). Patients will be asked questions about their quality of life. Other tools for assessment will also be administered.

This is a descriptive, pilot study to assess the safety of converting a subset of adult sickle cell patients who are on effective disease modifying therapy (on high dose oral opioids who are unable to wean off opioids) and who continue to have frequent acute visits where parenteral opioids are administered to convert all opioid treatments to buprenorphine. Quality of life will be assessed using the Adult Sickle Cell Quality of life Measurement tool (ASCQ-Me), the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI), two Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) surveys (short-form Pain Interference and Physical Function), and frequency of acute pain visits.

Buprenorphine is a partial mu-agonist and kappa antagonist and has a high affinity for the mu receptors with an elimination half-life of 28-37 hours for the sublingual administration. The lower risk for misuse, diminished withdrawal symptoms and cravings for opioids as well as the reduced risk of overdose make it an appealing alternative. Recent data on successful conversion for patients with chronic pain show a decrease in pain scores and increase in quality of life measurements after the beginning buprenorphine therapy for more than two months.

The first dose will be determined for each patient by a physician to ensure that the dosage of buprenorphine will be appropriate given the patient's current opioid dosage. There is the risk of withdrawal induced vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC).

Within 30 days prior to conversion to buprenorphine, a patient will take the ASCQ-Me, BPI, and two PROMIS surveys. Twenty-four hours prior to conversion, the patient will stop all opioid intake. The day of conversion, the patient will take a Clinical Opiate Withdrawal Scale (COWS) survey to determine whether they are in withdrawal. If so, the patient will begin buprenorphine conversion. They will also retake the aforementioned quality of life surveys. The patient will return on days 1, 14, 30, 90, and 180 to be evaluated.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Sickle Cell Disease, any genotype
• On disease modifying therapy (either chronic transfusions or hydroxyurea)
• On chronic daily full agonist opioid therapy with doses ranging from 90 to 400 morphine equivalents
• Have greater than 5 acute care visits in the last 6 months or have daily pain of 7 or higher on the Visual Analog Scale despite chronic opioid therapy.
• Able to provide consent
• Has medical insurance

Exclusion Criteria:

• Acute vaso-occlusive crisis on day of or day prior to buprenorphine initiation
• Use of methadone as long acting opioid (due to prolonged half-life and limited data in other populations)
• Use of illicit drugs as documented by urine toxicology screen (except for THC)
• Pregnancy
• Acute or severe bronchial asthma
• Hypersensitivity to buprenorphine or any component of the product
• Medical disorder, condition, or history that in the investigator's judgement would impair the patient's ability to participate or complete this study or render the patient to be inappropriate for enrollment.

Data will be published at some point in the future but individual data will not be disclosed

Within 72 hours of induction

The study was not randomized nor controlled. The participant pool was limited to those patients who consented to have their data reported; and among those prospectively enrolled, to those who accepted induction. In addition, not all inductions followed the same procedure. In particular, those that were performed inpatient might have a number of biases in patient selection and capacity to detect adverse events.