Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy
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Subst Abuse Treat Prev Policy · May 2017
Randomized Controlled TrialMen's and women's response to treatment and perceptions of outcomes in a randomized controlled trial of injectable opioid assisted treatment for severe opioid use disorder.
To test whether there are gender differences in treatment outcomes among patients receiving injectable opioids for the treatment of long-term opioid-dependence. The study additionally explores whether men and women have different perceptions of treatment effectiveness. ⋯ Despite presenting to treatment with vulnerabilities not faced to the same extent by men, at six-months women did not differ significantly from men in tested trial efficacy outcomes. While the primary outcome in the trial was the reduction of illicit opioid use, in the open-ended responses both men and women focused their comments on improvement in health and quality of life as reasons for treatment effectiveness. The supervised model of care with injectable medications provides a particularly suitable framework for providing care to opioid-dependent men and women not attracted or retained by other treatments. The absence of statistical differences reported in this secondary analysis may be due to lack of adequate statistical power to detect meaningful effects.
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Subst Abuse Treat Prev Policy · Oct 2008
Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative StudyTreatment of alcohol dependence in patients with co-morbid major depressive disorder--predictors for the outcomes with memantine and escitalopram medication.
Alcohol dependence comorbid with major depressive disorder poses a major challenge in the clinical setting. The results in the treatment with selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors have been conflicting. Thus, we compared in alcohol-dependent patients with co-morbid major depressive disorder the selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor escitalopram to a compound that acts on different transporter system and may reduce craving, the glutamate receptor antagonist memantine. ⋯ Our results indicate that both memantine and escitalopram are useful adjunct medications for the treatment of alcohol dependence co-morbid with major depression. Memantine was at least as effective with regard to drinking as escitalopram. We believe that a direct comparison of memantine, with the commonly used escitalopram, can provide useful information for clinicians on the treatment of alcohol dependency co-morbid with MDD.