Active clinical trials for "Alcoholism"

The project is geared towards the understanding of how to increase cognitive control over cue reactivity and drug craving.

This study evaluates the use of N-acetylcysteine in the treatment of alcohol and cocaine use disorders. Alcohol users will be split in two groups, one will receive the active N-acetylcysteine and the other placebo. The same division will occur with cocaine users. The effects of N-acetylcysteine in adherence, abstinence, psychiatric symptoms and stress biomarkers will be evaluated.

The purpose of this study is to show the effectiveness of Soberlink's remote alcohol monitoring system integrated with MAP's patient engagement platform (EHR) to monitor a sample size of at-risk alcohol use disorder (AUD) population. Ultimately, this data is leveraged to improve clinical outcomes and manage financial risk through facilitating early interventions and other means of mitigating recidivism and costly treatment episodes from AUD population.

Among behavioral cognitive psychotherapies, new "Mindfulness" interventions allow patient to identify, pay attention and accept external (sensory stimuli) and internal (cognition and emotions) phenomena. This "to do with" training has yielded promising results in stress management, prevention of depressive relapse, management of craving and an increase in self-efficacy. Few studies (none in France) have attempted to measure the efficacy of this technique on alcohol relapse, in particular by comparing it with a usual management strategy (conventional relapse prevention therapy). The main objective of this study is to compare the efficacy on alcoholic relapse (measured in the "first glass" consumed), from a Mindfulness therapeutic program to a conventional Relapse Prevention program. Secondary objectives are to demonstrate the efficacy of this program on craving, self-efficacy, and secondary endpoints of relapse (massive alcoholism, number of alcoholisation days).

The aim of this study is to use functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to measure neural reactivity to alcohol-related and emotional cues in alcohol dependent subjects following a single dose of the opioid receptor modulator nalmefene. The study will be done in a cross over design with nalmefene versus placebo.

Relapse is a major risk in substance abuse disorders, which is closely related to craving for a substance, describing a strong urge for consumption. Cue-exposure therapy is an intervention aiming at the reduction of perceived craving by repeated confrontation. It is based on the assumption that craving drops after repeated exposure without the reinforcing experience elicited by consumption. In the present study, patients with alcohol dependency take part in nine cue-exposure training sessions. Each session consists of mood induction reflecting a high risk situation with subsequent in vivo confrontation with one's preferred alcoholic beverage followed by the training of coping strategies. During the cue-exposure, patients focus on perceiving automatic responses to alcohol-related cues. We hypothesize that especially patients exhibiting initially high reactions to such cues should profit from this intervention the most. The reactions are measured on a subjective (craving) and physiological level (hemodynamics of the prefrontal cortex, heart rate variability, electrodermal activity). Furthermore, we want to strengthen the expected training effects during the cue-exposure by an activating transcranial direct current stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which has been shown to be hypoactive in substance abuse disorders. We investigate how the cue-exposure training affects the processing of alcoholic cues (cue-reactivity) and its relation to clinical symptoms of alcohol dependency.

The main objective of this study is to assess the efficacy of bilateral deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and the ventral anterior internal capsule (VC) as a novel treatment in severe alcohol addiction. The included patients have been treated so far with drugs that inhibits alcohol, or psychological behavior training. Our hypothesis is that bilateral NAc-VC DBS will significantly reduce the craving for alcohol and thus enable the patients to decrease their alcohol intake substantially.

Despite the body's natural healing during the first year after a head injury, many veterans who have suffered even mild brain injuries find themselves easily upset or fearful as they go about their daily lives. While these reactions to the world around them were easily managed before the head injury, they now occur with little or no interruption and are exceedingly difficult to manage. Such reactions include a sense of always being upset or fearful that often makes it difficult to get along with family members, friends, coworkers, and employers. This may lead to broken marriages, unemployment, and even homelessness. Some people with head injuries try to manage their unmanageable moods by drinking alcohol because it can create a sense of calm. However, alcohol's actions are short in duration. Most find that they have to drink more and more for a similar calming effect, and they soon become dependent on alcohol. This makes working and being part of their families even more difficult. To treat the unmanageable mood, we tried a medicine called valproate, one that eases mood problems in people without head injury. We gave valproate to head injured persons with mood problems in a "non-blinded" study where both the doctor and the patient knew that the medicine was valproate and both were optimistic that it would work. In a small sample of eighteen people, 85% found mood relief and most of those either stopped drinking alcohol or drank much less than before. However, this might have been because both the doctor and patient were hopeful that the medication would make the patient feel better or because the medicine actually worked. The only way to know for sure if the medicine works is to perform a study in which people receive either valproate or a sugar pill while neither they nor their doctor know which one they are taking. This is called a double blind study, as proposed here, and will involve nearly three times as many head injured persons as the first study. If it is successful, this study will show that valproate treatment helps head injured people manage their moods and allows them to return to families, friends, and work. It will also show that they drink alcohol less or not at all, improving their health even further. Then doctors will know that they can use this medicine for large numbers of people who suffer from head injury and help them to lead normal lives. If the outcome of the study shows that the medicine works well, doctors can then use this medicine to treat people with head injury immediately after the study results are published.

The primary aim of this research is to test the efficacy of innovative, brief alcohol abuse prevention strategies that integrate positive youth development messages and health risk messages for adolescents in high school settings. A secondary aim is to examine these strategies in various combinations as interventions and re-interventions (i.e., boosters) for sustaining or enhancing behavior change over time. These strategies are founded upon an emerging conceptual framework titled the Behavior-Image Model emanating from findings of our recent trials examining multiple behavior health interventions. The long-term objective of this project is to reduce alcohol abuse and problems among older high-risk adolescents for whom alcohol and drug use disparities exist, yet who are often overlooked in prevention research and services.

Exposure to alcohol related cues, such as the sight of alcoholic drinks, may induce craving for alcohol in drinkers. In this study, the effects of exposure to (1) the pictures of alcoholic drinks and (2) the imagining of a scene related to drinking on activity in the frontal region of the brain in heavy social drinkers will be determined. This study is being conducted to develop the methods needed to allow for the detection of cue-induced changes in drinkers using the EEG. The objective of this pilot study is to establish procedures for detecting alcohol-related cue-elicited changes in EEG activity in heavy drinkers.