Aripiprazole has potential for treating alcohol dependence

• Aripiprazole is currently approved to treat bipolar disorder as well as schizophrenia.
• A new study has found that it significantly and dose-dependently increases the sedative effects of alcohol and, to a lesser degree, decreases the euphoric effects of alcohol.
• Future research will need to examine the beneficial versus the side effects of aripiprazole for treatment of alcohol dependence.

Aripiprazole is currently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to treat bipolar disorder as well as schizophrenia. A study of aripiprazole’s potential for treating alcohol dependence has found that it significantly and dose-dependently increases the sedative effects of alcohol and, to a lesser degree, decreases the euphoric effects of alcohol.

Results are published in the April issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

“Aripiprazole is a dopamine partial agonist,” explained Henry R. Kranzler, a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut Health Center and corresponding author for the study. “Since dopamine is involved in the rewarding effects of alcohol, we thought that aripiprazole might reduce those effects.”

“Aripiprazole is an unusual drug in that it has different pharmacological effects at different doses and it might do one thing acutely and another during chronic dosing,” said Raymond F. Anton, Distinguished University Professor and director of the Clinical Neurobiology Laboratory at the Medical University of South Carolina. “In general, it appears to have the potential to reduce drinking if you get the dose right for an individual patient. More work needs to be done to ‘fine tune’ its effectiveness, which is what this study attempts to do.”

Researchers recruited 18 social drinkers from the community: nine men and nine women between the ages of 21 and 45 years of age. Each participant completed three experimental sessions in a randomized sequence; receiving on the day before the laboratory session either no medication, or 2.5 mg or 10 mg of aripiprazole. During each session, participants consumed three standard drinks, for a total of 0.8 g/kg of alcohol for the men, and 0.7 g/kg for the women. Breath alcohol concentrations, heart rate, blood pressure, static ataxia (body sway), and subjective effects were measured regularly throughout the laboratory sessions.

“Findings show that aripiprazole made the drinkers sleepier and they experienced less pleasure from alcohol than they might have without it,” said Kranzler.