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Trial details imported from ClinicalTrials.gov

For full trial details, please see the original record at https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT02634476

Registration number

NCT02634476

Ethics application status

Date submitted

16/10/2015

Date registered

18/12/2015

Titles & IDs

Public title

Can Cognitive-bias Modification Training During Inpatient Alcohol Detoxification Reduce Relapse Rates Post-discharge?

Scientific title

Can Cognitive-bias Modification Training During Inpatient Alcohol Detoxification Reduce Relapse Rates Post-discharge?

Secondary ID [1]

E33-1314

Universal Trial Number (UTN)

Trial acronym

Linked study record

Health condition

Health condition(s) or problem(s) studied:

Alcohol Dependence

Condition category

Condition code

Mental Health

Addiction

Intervention/exposure

Study type

Interventional

Description of intervention(s) / exposure

BEHAVIORAL - Alcohol approach/avoidance task
BEHAVIORAL - Sham approach/avoidance task

Experimental: cognitive bias modification training - Participants complete four sessions of the alcohol approach/avoidance task.

Sham comparator: sham training - Participants complete four sessions of the sham approach/avoidance task.

BEHAVIORAL: Alcohol approach/avoidance task
The approach-bias modification is a computerised alcohol approach/avoidance task (alcohol-AAT) in which participants are instructed to respond with an approach movement (pulling a joystick) to pictures in landscape orientation and an avoidance movement (pushing a joystick) to pictures in portrait orientation. The size of the image is increased and decreased by pulling and pushing the joystick respectively, generating a sensation of approach or avoidance. Pictures include images of 20 alcoholic and 20 non-alcoholic drinks presented in a fixed orientation such that participants are in effect instructed to respond to pictures of alcohol by making an avoidance movement (pushing the joystick) and to pictures of non-alcoholic soft drinks by making an approach movement (pulling the joystick).

BEHAVIORAL: Sham approach/avoidance task
The computerised training for the sham condition is the same as for the experimental condition, except that in the sham approach/avoidance task, both landscape and portrait pictures all contain neutral (non-alcohol related).

Intervention code [1]

BEHAVIORAL

Comparator / control treatment

Control group

Outcomes

Primary outcome [1]

Alcohol abstinence

Timepoint [1]

2-week follow-up

Secondary outcome [1]

Days until relapse

Timepoint [1]

2-week follow-up

Secondary outcome [2]

Number of heavy drinking days

Timepoint [2]

2-week follow-up

Secondary outcome [3]

Alcohol craving

Timepoint [3]

Immediately after the 4th training session (days 6 or 7 following admission)

Secondary outcome [4]

Alcohol craving

Timepoint [4]

2-week follow-up

Secondary outcome [5]

Abstinence at 3-months

Timepoint [5]

3-month follow-up

Secondary outcome [6]

Decision-making

Timepoint [6]

Immediately after the 4th training session (days 6 or 7 following admission)

Eligibility

Key inclusion criteria

* At least weekly use of alcohol in the past month.
* Meet Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) criteria for alcohol use disorder
* Currently in treatment for alcohol withdrawal
* Able to understand English

Minimum age

18 Years

Maximum age

60 Years

Sex

Both males and females

Can healthy volunteers participate?

Key exclusion criteria

* Meet Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) criteria for a psychotic illness
* History of neurological illness
* History of brain injury involving loss of consciousness for >30 minutes
* Intellectual disability

Study design

Purpose of the study

Treatment

Allocation to intervention

Randomised controlled trial

Procedure for enrolling a subject and allocating the treatment (allocation concealment procedures)

Methods used to generate the sequence in which subjects will be randomised (sequence generation)

Masking / blinding

Blinded (masking used)

Who is / are masked / blinded?

The people receiving the treatment/s

Intervention assignment

Parallel

Other design features

Phase

Not applicable

Type of endpoint/s

Statistical methods / analysis

Recruitment

Recruitment status

Completed

Data analysis

Reason for early stopping/withdrawal

Other reasons

Date of first participant enrolment

Anticipated

Actual

1/06/2014

Date of last participant enrolment

Anticipated

Actual

Date of last data collection

Anticipated

Actual

1/02/2016

Sample size

Target

Accrual to date

Final

Recruitment in Australia

Recruitment state(s)

VIC

Recruitment hospital [1]

Wellington House - Box Hill

Recruitment postcode(s) [1]

3128 - Box Hill

Funding & Sponsors

Primary sponsor type

Other

Name

Turning Point

Address

Country

Other collaborator category [1]

Other

Name [1]

Monash University

Address [1]

Country [1]

Other collaborator category [2]

Other

Name [2]

Deakin University

Address [2]

Country [2]

Ethics approval

Ethics application status

Summary

Brief summary

It is well-established that many substance misusers experience impairment in cognition (thinking skills), particularly those needed to regulate and monitor behaviour and ensure that goals are achieved. According to the dual-process model, addiction arises from an imbalance in 'bottom-up' processing i.e., overactive automatic (impulsive) processes that drive behaviours and impaired 'top-down' controlling processes that stop behaviours associated with negative consequences. As a result, the individual becomes more sensitive to cues in their environment (e.g., alcohol images) that trigger the addictive behaviour. Cognitive-bias modification (CBM) is a novel, computer-based training paradigm that trains the brain to pay less attention to negative/harmful cues and more attention to positive or neutral cues. This approach minimizes the overactive 'bottom-up' processes and improves the 'top-down' control processes of unhealthy behaviors which enables the addicted individual to make better decisions. Recently, CBM has been used with addicted population to alter the tendency to approach alcohol, with one German study showing that a 4-session training programme was associated higher rates of abstinence at one-year (Wiers et al., 2011). The current study examines whether a novel computer based training programme alters cognitive biases (the tendency to approach alcohol related stimuli) in alcohol-dependent inpatients, and examine whether this enables them to be better at decision-making more generally, and its impact on craving and post-discharge abstinence rates. The study will also explore whether individual differences in impulsivity and sensitivity to reward and punishment determine response to the training programme. This will be achieved using a parallel-groups randomized superiority trial design involving approximately 80 patients attending inpatient withdrawal programmes in Victoria. The findings are likely to have implications for the design and delivery of psychosocial interventions delivered during early recovery from alcohol-dependence to optimise treatment effectiveness.

Trial website

https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT02634476

Trial related presentations / publications

Wiers RW, Eberl C, Rinck M, Becker ES, Lindenmeyer J. Retraining automatic action tendencies changes alcoholic patients' approach bias for alcohol and improves treatment outcome. Psychol Sci. 2011 Apr;22(4):490-7. doi: 10.1177/0956797611400615. Epub 2011 Mar 9.
Eberl C, Wiers RW, Pawelczack S, Rinck M, Becker ES, Lindenmeyer J. Implementation of approach bias re-training in alcoholism-how many sessions are needed? Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2014 Feb;38(2):587-94. doi: 10.1111/acer.12281. Epub 2013 Oct 24.
Gladwin TE, Figner B, Crone EA, Wiers RW. Addiction, adolescence, and the integration of control and motivation. Dev Cogn Neurosci. 2011 Oct;1(4):364-76. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2011.06.008. Epub 2011 Jul 2.
Bechara A, Tranel D, Damasio H. Characterization of the decision-making deficit of patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex lesions. Brain. 2000 Nov;123 ( Pt 11):2189-202. doi: 10.1093/brain/123.11.2189. Erratum In: Brain. 2009 Jul;132(Pt 7):1993.
Dawe S, Gray JA. Craving and drug reward: a comparison of methadone and clonidine in detoxifying opiate addicts. Drug Alcohol Depend. 1995 Oct;39(3):207-12. doi: 10.1016/0376-8716(95)01159-8.
Fadardi JS, Cox WM. Reversing the sequence: reducing alcohol consumption by overcoming alcohol attentional bias. Drug Alcohol Depend. 2009 May 1;101(3):137-45. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2008.11.015. Epub 2009 Feb 3.
Gullo MJ, Loxton NJ, Dawe S. Impulsivity: four ways five factors are not basic to addiction. Addict Behav. 2014 Nov;39(11):1547-1556. doi: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2014.01.002. Epub 2014 Jan 16.
Peeters M, Wiers RW, Monshouwer K, van de Schoot R, Janssen T, Vollebergh WA. Automatic processes in at-risk adolescents: the role of alcohol-approach tendencies and response inhibition in drinking behavior. Addiction. 2012 Nov;107(11):1939-46. doi: 10.1111/j.1360-0443.2012.03948.x. Epub 2012 Aug 28.
Wiers RW, Rinck M, Dictus M, van den Wildenberg E. Relatively strong automatic appetitive action-tendencies in male carriers of the OPRM1 G-allele. Genes Brain Behav. 2009 Feb;8(1):101-6. doi: 10.1111/j.1601-183X.2008.00454.x. Epub 2008 Nov 11.
Eberl C, Wiers RW, Pawelczack S, Rinck M, Becker ES, Lindenmeyer J. Approach bias modification in alcohol dependence: do clinical effects replicate and for whom does it work best? Dev Cogn Neurosci. 2013 Apr;4:38-51. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2012.11.002. Epub 2012 Nov 14.
Nasreddine ZS, Phillips NA, Bedirian V, Charbonneau S, Whitehead V, Collin I, Cummings JL, Chertkow H. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment, MoCA: a brief screening tool for mild cognitive impairment. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2005 Apr;53(4):695-9. doi: 10.1111/j.1532-5415.2005.53221.x. Erratum In: J Am Geriatr Soc. 2019 Sep;67(9):1991. doi: 10.1111/jgs.15925.
Wiers RW, Bartholow BD, van den Wildenberg E, Thush C, Engels RC, Sher KJ, Grenard J, Ames SL, Stacy AW. Automatic and controlled processes and the development of addictive behaviors in adolescents: a review and a model. Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 2007 Feb;86(2):263-83. doi: 10.1016/j.pbb.2006.09.021. Epub 2006 Nov 20.
Manning V, Staiger PK, Hall K, Garfield JB, Flaks G, Leung D, Hughes LK, Lum JA, Lubman DI, Verdejo-Garcia A. Cognitive Bias Modification Training During Inpatient Alcohol Detoxification Reduces Early Relapse: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2016 Sep;40(9):2011-9. doi: 10.1111/acer.13163. Epub 2016 Aug 4. Erratum In: Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2017 Aug;41(8):1526. doi: 10.1111/acer.13439.

Public notes

Contacts

Principal investigator

Name

Victoria Manning, PhD

Address

Senior Research Fellow

Country

Phone

Fax

Contact person for public queries

Name

Address

Country

Phone

Fax

Contact person for scientific queries

Data sharing statement

What supporting documents are/will be available?

No Supporting Document Provided

Results publications and other study-related documents

No documents have been uploaded by study researchers.

Results not provided in https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT02634476

Register a trial

For full trial details, please see the original record at https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT02634476