Conditions: Addiction
Keywords: Cocaine use decreases, increases or stays the same
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: CROSSOVER
Enrollment: 93
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
Specific Aim #1: To determine if galantamine (8 or 16 mg/day) is more effective than placebo in reducing cocaine use as measured by cocaine urine results and self-report days of use.

Specific Aim # 2: To determine if galantamine (8 or 16 mg/day) is more effective than placebo in improving attention, assessed with the Rapid Visual Information Processing (RVIP) and the Simple Reaction Time (SRT) tests Specific Aim # 3: To determine if improvement in attention during the first four weeks of treatment will mediate galantamine's efficacy in reducing cocaine use.

Detailed description:
This will be a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial. One hundred and twenty cocaine-dependent men and women will be randomized to one of three treatment groups: placebo (n=40), 8 mg/day (n=40), and 16 mg/day (n=40) of extended release (ER) galantamine. An urn randomization will be used to balance the groups for gender, severity of cocaine use (measured by days of cocaine use), baseline cognitive functioning \[determined via the Shipley Institute of Living Scale (SILS)\], and smoking status. Gender and severity of cocaine use have been shown to predict treatment responses in cocaine users (76). Similarly, balancing the treatment groups for baseline cognitive functioning, assessed with the SILS scores, will minimize the influence of baseline differences on cognitive outcomes (77, 78). Smoking status is also an important baseline variable, given galantamine's actions on nicotinic receptors and its potential efficacy for smoking cessation (65). The initial dose of galantamine will be 8 mg/day as a single dose, as recommended for clinical use. For those assigned to 16 mg/day, the dose of galantamine will be increased to 16 mg at the end of week 4. Treatment groups will remain on their full dosage through week 13. All participants will receive contingency management (CM) targeting treatment compliance. In three previous cocaine pharmacotherapy trials using bupropion, desipramine or levodopa, medication efficacy on cocaine use was evident only when medications were combined with CM, but not with standard care (79-81). These findings provide a strong rationale for using CM in our clinical trial.

Recruitment is continuing. This protocol was amended as of May 2014 to come to one dispensing visit and up too, two clinic visits. The payment has changed from gift cards to cash. This change should help increase the number of completers.

Currently there are 40 completers with 9 active and 6 in follow up phase. The follow up phase ended June 2016. Currently in analysis.

Arms:
arm 1: Sugar Pill will be compared with the active medication Galantamine arm 2: Comparing the active medication with the placebo medication to see if the self administration cocaine decreases.

Interventions: intervention 1: Galantamine intervention 2: Placebo
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: 8mg or 16mg intervention 2: Placebo dose.

Protocol document: