World-first new treatment for alcohol addictions
Neuroscientist Professor Selena Bartlett from QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation said the drug, pindolol, is an inexpensive approach for treating alcohol dependence once the human clinical trials are conducted. "Drugs currently used for AUDs (alcohol use disorders) -- acamprosate, naltrexone and disulfiram -- have limited success -- so this is a ground-breaking development with enormous potential," said Professor Bartlett who is based at the Translational Research Institute. "In an internationally-significant breakthrough, our study showed pindolol was able to reduce ethanol/alcohol consumption, particularly in relation to binge drinking, a key behaviour observed in human alcohol dependence." The study has been published in Addiction Biology , the Journal of the Society for the Study of Addiction. Researcher Omkar Patkar said the preclinical study is the first step towards fast tracking pindolol into human clinical studies as a treatm