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A follow up study on the efficacy of metadoxine in the treatment of alcohol dependence

BACKGROUND: We carried out a three months follow-up study on the efficacy of metadoxine in a cohort of alcoholics admitted to the Alcohol misuse Long-term Treatment (ALT) Unit – University of Pisa (Italy). We analyzed the clinical data, psychometric tests and blood tests of 160 alcoholics on admissi...

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Autores principales: Guerrini, Irene, Gentili, Claudio, Nelli, Gloria, Guazzelli, Mario
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2006
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764726/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17176456
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1747-597X-1-35
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author Guerrini, Irene
Gentili, Claudio
Nelli, Gloria
Guazzelli, Mario
author_facet Guerrini, Irene
Gentili, Claudio
Nelli, Gloria
Guazzelli, Mario
author_sort Guerrini, Irene
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: We carried out a three months follow-up study on the efficacy of metadoxine in a cohort of alcoholics admitted to the Alcohol misuse Long-term Treatment (ALT) Unit – University of Pisa (Italy). We analyzed the clinical data, psychometric tests and blood tests of 160 alcoholics on admission and after 3 months of treatment. We compared 58 pts treated with metadoxine (MET) with 102 pts who did not receive (NULL) any drug as an adjunct to the psycho-educational interventions provided by the ALT Unit. RESULTS: At follow-up, the patients in treatment with metadoxine showed a significant improvement in the rate of complete abstinence (44.8% vs. 21.6%; chi square: 8.45, df = 1, p < 0.0037). Furthermore, the number of drop-outs at three months of treatment was also significantly lower in the MET than in the NULL group (17% vs. 57%; chi square of 23.22, df = 1, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Our findings support the use of metadoxine in the management of alcohol dependence. However, randomized clinical trials are necessary to confirm and replicate them. This study raises the importance of identifying new pharmacological compounds effective on the outcome of alcoholism in order to help patients to best adhere to treatment programs and to prevent the development of mental and physical complications due to chronic and heavy use of alcohol.
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spelling pubmed-17647262007-01-09 A follow up study on the efficacy of metadoxine in the treatment of alcohol dependence Guerrini, Irene Gentili, Claudio Nelli, Gloria Guazzelli, Mario Subst Abuse Treat Prev Policy Research BACKGROUND: We carried out a three months follow-up study on the efficacy of metadoxine in a cohort of alcoholics admitted to the Alcohol misuse Long-term Treatment (ALT) Unit – University of Pisa (Italy). We analyzed the clinical data, psychometric tests and blood tests of 160 alcoholics on admission and after 3 months of treatment. We compared 58 pts treated with metadoxine (MET) with 102 pts who did not receive (NULL) any drug as an adjunct to the psycho-educational interventions provided by the ALT Unit. RESULTS: At follow-up, the patients in treatment with metadoxine showed a significant improvement in the rate of complete abstinence (44.8% vs. 21.6%; chi square: 8.45, df = 1, p < 0.0037). Furthermore, the number of drop-outs at three months of treatment was also significantly lower in the MET than in the NULL group (17% vs. 57%; chi square of 23.22, df = 1, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Our findings support the use of metadoxine in the management of alcohol dependence. However, randomized clinical trials are necessary to confirm and replicate them. This study raises the importance of identifying new pharmacological compounds effective on the outcome of alcoholism in order to help patients to best adhere to treatment programs and to prevent the development of mental and physical complications due to chronic and heavy use of alcohol. BioMed Central 2006-12-18 /pmc/articles/PMC1764726/ /pubmed/17176456 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1747-597X-1-35 Text en Copyright © 2006 Guerrini et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
Guerrini, Irene
Gentili, Claudio
Nelli, Gloria
Guazzelli, Mario
A follow up study on the efficacy of metadoxine in the treatment of alcohol dependence
title A follow up study on the efficacy of metadoxine in the treatment of alcohol dependence
title_full A follow up study on the efficacy of metadoxine in the treatment of alcohol dependence
title_fullStr A follow up study on the efficacy of metadoxine in the treatment of alcohol dependence
title_full_unstemmed A follow up study on the efficacy of metadoxine in the treatment of alcohol dependence
title_short A follow up study on the efficacy of metadoxine in the treatment of alcohol dependence
title_sort follow up study on the efficacy of metadoxine in the treatment of alcohol dependence
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764726/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17176456
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1747-597X-1-35
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