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news.Shares in biotech firm Alkermes have risen almost 7% after results from a phase III clinical study showed that a once-monthly dose of Vivitrex in combination with counseling significantly reduced heavy drinking in alcohol dependent patients.
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The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), represents one of the largest, most comprehensive clinical trials evaluating the use of medication for the treatment of alcohol dependence.
In the study, Vivitrex (naltrexone long-acting injection) reduced the median number of heavy drinking days in alcohol dependent patients from 19 days per month to three days per month.
“The results of the Vivitrex study show how pharmacotherapy has the potential to advance the standard of care for alcohol dependence,” stated Dr James Garbutt, Professor of Psychiatry at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and lead author of the publication. “Alcoholism is a disease that causes physiological changes in the brain, and the use of medication is a logical foundation for counseling and recovery efforts.”
In the US, approximately 18 million people are dependent on or abuse alcohol and an estimated 2.3 million adults seek treatment each year. Alcohol is causally related to more than 60 medical conditions, including heart disease, liver disease, infectious disease, and cancer, and contributes to more than 100,000 deaths in the US each year.