• Jie Yang, Melita Giummarra, Louisa Picco, Carolyn Arnold, and Suzanne Nielsen.
• Monash Addiction Research Centre, Eastern Health Clinical School, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
• Pain Med. 2025 Feb 12.

ObjectiveTo examine the demographic and clinical characteristics of patients attending pain management services who were receiving opioid agonist treatment (ie, methadone or buprenorphine for the treatment of opioid use disorder) in comparison to those taking prescription opioid analgesics in oral morphine equivalent daily doses at low (<40 mg) and high doses (>100 mg) using a national database from the electronic Persistent Pain Outcomes Collaboration (ePPOC) in Australia.DesignA cross-sectional study.SettingAustralian pain services.SubjectsAdult patients referred to Australian pain service clinics between 2016 and 2021.MethodsMultinomial and bivariate logistic regression models were conducted to compare the demographic and clinical characteristics of patients on opioid agonist treatment and those taking other prescription opioid analgesics.ResultsAmong 42,182 participants, most were female (56.8%), with a mean age of 51.7 years. People on opioid agonist treatment (n = 1,016) and high-dose opioids (n = 7,122) were similar in that they both had more severe mental health symptoms and longer pain duration, compared with the low-dose group (n = 20,517). Compared to the high-dose group, people on opioid agonist treatment had reduced odds of reporting more severe pain intensity, but increased odds of having multimorbidity, more severe anxiety and pain catastrophising thoughts.ConclusionsThese findings highlight the need for mental health treatment and the necessity of tailored multidisciplinary pain management for people in opioid agonist treatment.© The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Academy of Pain Medicine.

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