University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) Dean Mark T. Gladwin, MD, announced today that the school will receive a $29 million research award over four years from the National Institutes of Health to lead a multicenter trial that aims to improve health outcomes in people who inject opioid drugs and are hospitalized with infectious complications of their drug use. Faculty affiliated with the and the Kahlert Institute for Addiction Medicine at UMSOM will be conducting the research.

The research award, which has provided $8.7 million in funding for the first year, is funded by the NIH’s Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative (NIH HEAL Initiative) for the implementation of the Continuum of Care in Hospitalized Patients with Opioid Use Disorder and Infectious Complications of Drug Use (CHOICE) investigation. Principal IHV Investigators are Sarah Kattakuzhy, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine at UMSOM, and Elana Rosenthal, MD, associate professor of medicine at UMSOM, and Co-Investigator and Edward Traver, MD, assistant professor medicine at UMSOM.

“Our current research demonstrated that patients with substance use disorder hospitalized for infectious complications are prone to have negative outcomes.  There is a limited understanding of what interventions can best improve outcomes in people who use drugs, especially in the vulnerable time period after hospitalization,” said Kattakuzhy, co-Principal Investigator and Associate Director of the Kahlert Institute. “The CHOICE investigation will test multiple interventions to improve outcomes in this vulnerable population.”

People who inject drugs have an increased risk of contracting infections including local injection-related infections to serious infections, like bacteremia (blood infections) or endocarditis (heart infection), that can be life-threatening.