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American Morning

Paging Dr. Gupta: Alcoholism Drug

Aired December 10, 2003 - 08:44   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: A drug that's being used to treat alcoholism has been reformulated, and it is new, in injectable form. That drug showing promise in helping men who have the disease.
Sanjay Gupta, the good doctor here with us in New York to talk about this.

Nice to see you. Good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

HEMMER: Really very interesting on this alcoholism issue. Before we get to that, though, the FDA has issued a new recommendation to try and keep drugs when they're administered to be even safer and make sure they are complete. Tell us about that.

GUPTA: This is a big deal. And we've talked a lot about medical mistakes. About 7,000 of those medical mistakes being due to medication errors. Hospital deaths rather being due to medication errors. These seems sort of like a no-brainer. Essentially what you're doing is putting bar codes, those supermarket-like bar codes, on medications, to try and get nurses, doctors, whoever is prescribing them and actually giving the medication to actually make sure that the medication matches the patient. Pretty simple. Do they think it's going to work? Do they think it's going to cut down the number of deaths? Absolutely.

HEMMER: You like this idea.

GUPTA: I think it's a good -- and the FDA is saying now if you make a drug, if the manufacturers are making a drug, it must have one of these bar codes on it. Look for that pretty soon.

HEMMER: Let's turn to alcoholism right now. What is the new treatment? How does it work?

GUPTA: This is also a very interesting. You know, when you talk about alcoholism, there's about a million people every year who are actively seeking treatment for alcoholism. The problem is about 50 percent of the people who get treatment relapse, so there's been a long search now for a better sort of drug. That came in the form of an oral drug known as Naltrexone. People who know about this drug know it works pretty well in terms of reducing the euphoric-like high associated with taking a drink. The problem is you had to take a pill every day. Could you make an injectable form that you only had to take one injection once a month. People would remember that, and that's exactly what we're talking about here. Now Vivitrex is the name of this drug. Does it work?

Well, that was the subject of a new study. That's what we're talking about today, 624 patients, all of them heavy drinkers. We're going to talk about what that means in a second. Six months they were followed. They were given a large dose of the drug, a smaller dose and a placebo, and all the patients incidentally also received psycho- social therapy, as well, counseling for their alcoholism.

Here's the study: 19 heavy days of drinking per month they were doing before the study. With just pyscho-social therapy alone, seven to eight days per month. The higher dose of the drug now, you cut that 19 days down, to about two to three days per month of heavy drinking. That's pretty significant.

HEMMER: A couple questions here, heavy drinking defined by how?

GUPTA: Let's define that. They were defining that as basically five drinks or more at any given time. Hard drink, alcohol, two ounces of that, six ounces of wine.

HEMMER: Why the difference in genders then? Works for men, doesn't for women?

GUPTA: You noticed that last line. That's sort of interesting, as well. And we asked the researchers about that very issue as well. A lot of these therapies for some reason or another do seem to work better in men. Is the psycho-social therapy accounting for most of the difference in men versus women? We don't know. That's certainly going to be a subject of further study. It didn't really work at all for women.

HEMMER: Back to a question I asked earlier, how does it work?

GUPTA: When you talk about alcohol sort of drugs, alcoholism drugs, there's one drug out there a lot of people know called Antibuse (ph), and what that drug does, it basically makes you violently ill every time you have a drink. That's one way of stopping alcoholism. This doesn't work that way. Basically what this does is when you take a drink, it's been believed that alcoholics get this incredible euphoric-like high from a single drink, much more so than an average person who takes a drink. If you somehow eliminate that high, they don't feel it as much, then they're not going to want as much drinks, and that's what this study showed.

HEMMER: Back to the study, how critical do you think it might be in terms of treating alcoholism?

GUPTA: Well, you know, there's no magic bullet when it comes to treating alcoholism. And even in these studies, they always mixed it with psycho-social counseling, as well, and that was a real important issue they made, is that You have to mix this with psycho-social counseling. The medications alone reduce it. They're not turning alcoholics into nondrinkers, they're just keeping them sober a little bit longer.

HEMMER: Got it. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired December 10, 2003 - 08:44   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: A drug that's being used to treat alcoholism has been reformulated, and it is new, in injectable form. That drug showing promise in helping men who have the disease.
Sanjay Gupta, the good doctor here with us in New York to talk about this.

Nice to see you. Good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

HEMMER: Really very interesting on this alcoholism issue. Before we get to that, though, the FDA has issued a new recommendation to try and keep drugs when they're administered to be even safer and make sure they are complete. Tell us about that.

GUPTA: This is a big deal. And we've talked a lot about medical mistakes. About 7,000 of those medical mistakes being due to medication errors. Hospital deaths rather being due to medication errors. These seems sort of like a no-brainer. Essentially what you're doing is putting bar codes, those supermarket-like bar codes, on medications, to try and get nurses, doctors, whoever is prescribing them and actually giving the medication to actually make sure that the medication matches the patient. Pretty simple. Do they think it's going to work? Do they think it's going to cut down the number of deaths? Absolutely.

HEMMER: You like this idea.

GUPTA: I think it's a good -- and the FDA is saying now if you make a drug, if the manufacturers are making a drug, it must have one of these bar codes on it. Look for that pretty soon.

HEMMER: Let's turn to alcoholism right now. What is the new treatment? How does it work?

GUPTA: This is also a very interesting. You know, when you talk about alcoholism, there's about a million people every year who are actively seeking treatment for alcoholism. The problem is about 50 percent of the people who get treatment relapse, so there's been a long search now for a better sort of drug. That came in the form of an oral drug known as Naltrexone. People who know about this drug know it works pretty well in terms of reducing the euphoric-like high associated with taking a drink. The problem is you had to take a pill every day. Could you make an injectable form that you only had to take one injection once a month. People would remember that, and that's exactly what we're talking about here. Now Vivitrex is the name of this drug. Does it work?

Well, that was the subject of a new study. That's what we're talking about today, 624 patients, all of them heavy drinkers. We're going to talk about what that means in a second. Six months they were followed. They were given a large dose of the drug, a smaller dose and a placebo, and all the patients incidentally also received psycho- social therapy, as well, counseling for their alcoholism.

Here's the study: 19 heavy days of drinking per month they were doing before the study. With just pyscho-social therapy alone, seven to eight days per month. The higher dose of the drug now, you cut that 19 days down, to about two to three days per month of heavy drinking. That's pretty significant.

HEMMER: A couple questions here, heavy drinking defined by how?

GUPTA: Let's define that. They were defining that as basically five drinks or more at any given time. Hard drink, alcohol, two ounces of that, six ounces of wine.

HEMMER: Why the difference in genders then? Works for men, doesn't for women?

GUPTA: You noticed that last line. That's sort of interesting, as well. And we asked the researchers about that very issue as well. A lot of these therapies for some reason or another do seem to work better in men. Is the psycho-social therapy accounting for most of the difference in men versus women? We don't know. That's certainly going to be a subject of further study. It didn't really work at all for women.

HEMMER: Back to a question I asked earlier, how does it work?

GUPTA: When you talk about alcohol sort of drugs, alcoholism drugs, there's one drug out there a lot of people know called Antibuse (ph), and what that drug does, it basically makes you violently ill every time you have a drink. That's one way of stopping alcoholism. This doesn't work that way. Basically what this does is when you take a drink, it's been believed that alcoholics get this incredible euphoric-like high from a single drink, much more so than an average person who takes a drink. If you somehow eliminate that high, they don't feel it as much, then they're not going to want as much drinks, and that's what this study showed.

HEMMER: Back to the study, how critical do you think it might be in terms of treating alcoholism?

GUPTA: Well, you know, there's no magic bullet when it comes to treating alcoholism. And even in these studies, they always mixed it with psycho-social counseling, as well, and that was a real important issue they made, is that You have to mix this with psycho-social counseling. The medications alone reduce it. They're not turning alcoholics into nondrinkers, they're just keeping them sober a little bit longer.

HEMMER: Got it. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com