Drug Treatment for Pathologic Gambling Disorder

February 21, 2023 updated by: University of Chicago

Naltrexone Treatment in Pathologic Gambling Disorder

This study will establish the best dose of the drug naltrexone to treat patients with Pathological Gambling Disorder (PGD) and severe urge symptoms.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

PGD is a prominent and growing social problem. Unfortunately, there is no established drug treatment for this disorder. Preliminary investigations demonstrate that naltrexone in doses up to 250 mg/day is well tolerated and safe during an 11-week period and may be a viable treatment option for PGD patients with severe urges. The implications of this study extend from PGD to other impulse control disorders, including compulsive shopping, kleptomania, and possibly alcoholism.

Participants are randomly assigned to receive either naltrexone or placebo for 16 weeks. The responses of men and women are compared to determine whether efficacy is distributed in a male:female ratio analogous to that of the PGD population in the United States. A Clinical Global Impression and a Gambling Symptom Scale are used to assess participants.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

83

Phase

  • Phase 3

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • United States
    • Minnesota
      • Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, 55454
        • University of Minnesota Medical School

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

21 years to 75 years (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV criteria for Pathological Gambling Disorder
  • Moderate or severe gambling urge assessed by the Gambling Symptom Assessment Scale
  • No psychiatric drug use for 2 weeks or more
  • Score >= 5 on The South Oaks Gambling Screen
  • Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and Anxiety Rating score < 26. An increase (up to 10 points) of the scores is allowed unless the subject shows the risks of suicide.
  • Completion of complete blood count, urinalysis, liver and thyroid function tests, and pregnancy tests, with no evidence of significant lab abnormalities
  • Reliable birth control in women of child-bearing potential

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Treatment
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: Triple

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Placebo Comparator: Naltrexone
17 weeks of double-blind Naltrexone. Subjects were randomized into one of these three conditions (if they weren't randomized to placebo): naltrexone 50mg/day, 100mg/day, 150mg/day. To minimize nausea, treatment for all subjects was initiated at 25mg/day naltrexone for two days, then the dose was increased to 50mg/day. At week 3, subjects were randomly assigned to 50mg/day continued at that dose, while subjects who were randomized to naltrexone 100mg/day or 150mg/day were raised to the higher doses.
Drug: Naltrexone
For subjects who were randomly assigned to naltrexone 50mg/day, 100mg/day, or 150mg/day.
Placebo Comparator: Placebo
Subjects who were assigned to placebo in the 17 week double-blind phase.
Drug: Placebo
For subjects who were randomly assigned to placebo.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale for Pathological Gambling (PG-YBOCS)
Time Frame: 18 weeks
A gambling severity measure derived from the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale. It sums gambling urges and thoughts questions to make a total score. Total scores range from 0 to 40, which higher scores indicating more severe gambling symptoms (worse outcome).Administered every week for the first 8 weeks and every other week for the remaining 10 weeks. Final visit scores were the scores measured at the last visit for each participant; data from previous visits were not combined to compute this value.
18 weeks

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

University of Chicago

Collaborators

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Helpful Links

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start

December 1, 2002

Primary Completion (Actual)

November 1, 2005

Study Completion (Actual)

November 1, 2005

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

February 4, 2003

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 4, 2003

First Posted (Estimate)

February 5, 2003

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Estimate)

February 23, 2023

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 21, 2023

Last Verified

February 1, 2023

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • R21MH065920 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)
  • DSIR AT-AS

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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