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posted by martyb on Friday September 22 2017, @09:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the Stopping-is-easy...-I've-done-it-many-times! dept.

A new study published by the scientific journal Addiction has found no reliable evidence for using nalmefene, naltrexone, acamprosate, baclofen or topiramate to control drinking in patients with alcohol dependence or alcohol use disorder. At best, some treatments showed low to medium efficacy in reducing drinking, but those findings were from studies with a high risk of bias. None demonstrated any benefit on health outcomes.

The study pooled the results from 32 double-blind randomised controlled trials representing 6,036 patients, published between 1994 and 2015. The studies compared the effects of oral nalmefene (n=9), naltrexone (n=14), acamprosate (n=1), baclofen (n=4) and topimarate (n=4) against placebo.

Many of the studies provided unreliable results due to risk of bias (potential exaggeration of the effects of the drug). Twenty-six studies (81%) showed an unclear or high risk of incomplete outcome data due to the large number of withdrawals. Seventeen studies (53%) showed an unclear or a high risk of selective outcome reporting, as they did not include a protocol registration number, which would allow another researcher to check whether all outcomes were reported.

Clément Palpacuer, et. al. Pharmacologically controlled drinking in the treatment of alcohol dependence or alcohol use disorders: a systematic review with direct and network meta-analyses on nalmefene, naltrexone, acamprosate, baclofen and topiramate. Addiction, 2017; DOI: 10.1111/add.13974

Back to the drawing board.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 23 2017, @01:12AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 23 2017, @01:12AM (#571923)

    You may be underselling the social aspects of AA meetings.

    We mentioned before how rats with cool rat toys and rat friends tend to ignore the water bottle spiked with drugs.
    Portugal Cut Drug Addiction Rates in Half by Rejecting Criminalization [soylentnews.org]

    ...then there's The Placebo Effect where thinking something is effective can make it effective.

    ...and let's not forget that there's lots of drug consumption at AA meetings (coffee and cigarettes).
    So, substitution.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]