Efficacy of pharmacotherapeutics for patients comorbid with alcohol use disorders and depressive symptoms—A bayesian network meta‐analysis

BACKGROUND: We aimed to compare and rank the efficacy of different pharmacotherapeutics for patients comorbid with alcohol use disorders and depressive symptoms. METHOD: Bayesian network meta‐analysis was performed for three different outcome parameters: alcohol use disorders (AUD) remission rate, percent abstinent days, and scores of depression scales. The surface under the cumulative ranking curves (SUCRA) was used for ranking the efficacy of interventions. Sensitivity analysis and direct pairwise analysis were conducted to validate the main results. RESULTS: A total of 68 RCTs consisting of 5890 patients were included. Disulfiram could significantly increase the AUD remission rates (OR 5.02, 1.97‐12.95) and the percent abstinent days (MD 17.08, 3.48‐30.93). Disulfiram was associated with the best efficacy in achieving remission (SUCRA 95.1%) and increasing abstinent days (SUCRA 87.6%). Noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor was significantly more efficacious than controls (SMD −2.44, −3.53 to −1.36) and have the first rank (SUCRA 99.0%) in reducing the scores of depression scales. Antiepileptics have relatively higher ranks in efficacy for both AUD and depressive symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Disulfiram was associated with the best efficacy in achieving abstinence for comorbidity patients. Noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor was demonstrated to be associated with the best efficacy in reducing scores of depression scales. Antiepileptics might be beneficial to both alcohol‐related and depressive symptoms.