Effect of Prazosin and Naltrexone on Script Induced Alcohol Craving in Veterans with Alcohol Use Disorders with and without Co-occurring PTSD
Abstract
Military personnel are at risk for developing hazardous drinking patterns post-deployment that can negatively impact their health and psychiatric stability. This phenomenon is compounded by the fact that despite recent gains in establishing effective pharmacological and behavioral treatments for alcohol use disorders (AUD), nonremittance and relapse remain major problems for those with AUDs. One individual factor that is strongly associated with continued problematic use and relapse is craving. Three different types of craving have been hypothesized, reward, relief, and obsessive, and each is postulated to be mediated by different neurological substrates. The neural networks postulated to subserve reward and relief craving receive afferents from and project to noradrenergic neurons in non-human primates and humans express alpha-1 adrenergic receptors. Given the interplay of the noradrenergic system with craving-related brain systems, blocking alpha-1 receptors with the noradrenergic antagonist, prazosin, theoretically has the potential to modulate reward and relief craving. Objective/Hypotheses: The overarching objective of the study is to evaluate whether prazosin alone and/or in conjunction with naltrexone is effective at reducing reward and relief craving for alcohol among veterans with an AUD in both a human laboratory context and in their day-to-day lives via daily symptom telephone monitoring using Interactive Voice Response (IVR). The proposed study also seeks to evaluate whether specific individual characteristics, including PTSD status, moderate medication response.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2015
- Accession Number
- ADA619880
Entities
People
- Tracy Simpson
Organizations
- Seattle Institute for Biomedical and Clinical Research