New drug fights alcoholics’ urges

LONDON — A pill that makes alcoholics want to drink less has been developed by scientists, delegates to the European Psychiatric Association congress in Prague have been told.

The drug is thought to work by blocking mechanisms in the brain that give alcoholics enjoyment from drink and so helps them fight the urge to drink too much. It only needs to be taken when people are facing the temptation to drink alcohol.

Alcoholics taking the drug, in combination with counselling, more than halved the amount of alcohol they drank per day and binged on fewer days.

The drug, developed by the Lundbeck pharmaceutical company and called nalmefene, is not licensed yet and is going through clinical trials.

There are other drugs on the market that make addicts ill if they drink any alcohol at all but this is thought to be the first aimed at reducing the amount of alcohol consumed.

Side- effects included dizziness, nausea, fatigue, sleep disorder or insomnia, vomiting, cold- like symptoms or excessive sweating.

Dr. David Collier of the School of Medicine, Queen Mary University of London, who has worked as an investigator in a nalmefene study, said: “The people volunteering for these trials had real problems with alcohol dependence.

“Most had never sought help before, and others had failed with abstinence strategies, stopping drinking for good. Abstinence is the right option for many people, but not everyone wants to do that, and in those that do try, it helps only about half of them.

“From our experience in these trials, reducing alcohol consumption to safer levels can be a realistic and practical treatment goal for people who are dependent on alcohol, that can bring many short- and longerterm benefits to health.”

In one six- month trial, of 604 patients in five European countries, the average amount consumed by the alcoholics per day dropped from the equivalent of a bottle of wine to one large glass of wine. The number of days in which they drank dropped from 19 to seven.