Popping a pill can help treat alcoholism

An updated review of studies has confirmed that a little-used medication can help treat alcoholism. Twelve-step programs have been the mainstay for helping alcoholics to quit drinking, but a significant number of people who try these programs do not find them helpful or suffer relapses.

The Cochrane review finds that the medication naltrexone ” brand names are Depade and ReVia ” when combined with counseling or interventions like Alcoholics Anonymous, can help cut the risk of heavy drinking in patients who are dependent on alcohol.
Naltrexone works by blocking the pleasurable feelings, or "high," a person gets from drinking alcohol, thereby reducing motivation to drink. Naltrexone can be taken daily as a pill and is available as a long-acting injection.
Systematic reviews draw evidence-based conclusions about medical practice after considering both the content and quality of existing medical trials on a topic.
Michael Soyka, senior author of the review and colleagues examined the results of 50 previously published high-quality studies on naltrexone and alcohol dependence. Overall, the studies enrolled nearly 7,800 patients diagnosed with alcohol dependence.
Of these, about 4,200 patients took naltrexone or a similar drug called nalmefene. The rest of the patients took a placebo or had some other type of treatment. Treatment with naltrexone ranged from four weeks to a year, with most patients receiving about 12 weeks of treatment. Most patients also received counseling.
Researchers found that patients who received naltrexone were 17 percent less likely to return to heavy drinking than were patients who received a placebo treatment.
"That would mean that naltrexone can be expected to prevent heavy drinking in one out of eight patients who would otherwise have returned to a heavy drinking pattern," Soyka said.
Naltrexone also increased the number of people who were able to stay abstinent by 4 percent. While at first glance that might not seem like a miracle cure for alcoholism, Soyka said that the effectiveness of naltrexone is on par with medications used for other psychiatric conditions.
"Naltrexone is moderately effective in reducing alcohol intake. It's about as effective as antidepressants in depressive disorders," he said.
"From a safety point of view, there are few safety concerns. Nausea is the most frequent side effect."The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research, published the review.

Textaphrenia & textiety: Message conveys disorder

MELBOURNE: Ever heard of textaphrenia, textiety or post-traumatic text disorder? These are some of serious mental and physical disorders that teenaged Australian "text addicts" are suffering from, a new study has revealed.

The research into youth communication habits identified the risks teens face from texting excessively every day, and the symptoms included anxiety, insecurity, depression, low self-esteem and "repetitive thumb syndrome".

According to figures released by Boost Mobile, a reseller of the Optus network, text messaging has increased by 89% in the last two years.

Jennie Carroll, a technology researcher from RMIT University in Melbourne, has studied of the effects of modern communication since 2001 and said the mobile phone had become meshed into teenagers' lives.

Her study identified four distinct disorders — textaphrenia, textiety, post-traumatic text disorder and binge texting.

Textaphrenia is thinking a message had arrived when it hadn't, while textiety is the anxious feeling of not receiving or sending text messages. 

"With textaphrenia and textiety there's a feeling no one loves me, no one's contacted me," the Daily Telegraph quoted her as saying. 

Post-traumatic stress disorder involved physical and mental injuries from texting, like walking into things while texting and even crossing a road without looking. "There were reports from Japan of 'repetitive thumb syndrome' and thumbs growing because of texting leading to 'Monster Thumbs'," she revealed. 

Binge texting is when teens send multiple texts to feel good about themselves and try to attract responses. 

"This is the reverse of the anxiety — you think you've been left out of the loop so you send a lot of texts and wait for responses," Carroll explained.