Clinical Research Directory

Feasibility of Long-term, High-dose Stimulant for Methamphetamine Use Disorder

Methamphetamine use disorder (MUD) is becoming an increasing public health concern in Canada. While the evidence on the efficacy and safety of prescription psychostimulants for the treatment of MUD is promising, the knowledge on the maintenance therapy using stimulant agonist therapy is scarce and needs further investigation, especially in terms of long-term retention in treatment. The goal of this clinical trial is to evaluate the feasibility of a long-term (25 weeks) administration of high-dose stimulant agonist therapy, using Lisdexamfetamine (LDX-01) on top of treatment-as-usual (TAU), in a population of people with moderate to severe MUD, as measured by study retention, treatment retention, treatment adherence and satisfaction compared against a placebo group. Participants will be placed randomly into one of two groups: 1. TAU and high-dose LDX-01 2. TAU and placebo

Trial of Naltrexone/Bupropion for the Treatment of Methamphetamine Use Disorder

The primary objective of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of extended release naltrexone plus bupropion XL (XR-NTX/BUP-XL) compared to matched injectable and oral placebo (iPLB/oPLB) in reducing methamphetamine (MA) use in individuals with moderate or severe methamphetamine use disorder (MUD) seeking to stop or reduce MA use.

Encouraging Abstinence Behavior in a Drug Epidemic: Optimizing Dynamic Incentives

Combatting the rise of the opioid epidemic is a central challenge of U.S. health care policy. A promising approach for improving welfare and decreasing medical costs of people with substance abuse disorders is offering incentive payments for healthy behaviors. This approach, broadly known as "contingency management" in the medical literature, has repeatedly shown to be effective in treating substance abuse. However, the use of incentives by treatment facilities remains extremely low. Furthermore, it is not well understood how to design optimal incentives to treat opioid abuse. This project will conduct a randomized evaluation of two types of dynamically adjusting incentive schedules for people with opioid use disorders or cocaine use disorders: "escalating" schedules where incentive amounts increase with success to increase incentive power, and "de-escalating" schedules where incentive amounts decrease with success to improve incentive targeting. Both schemes are implemented with a novel "turnkey" mobile application, making them uniquely low-cost, low-hassle, and scalable. Effects will be measured on abstinence outcomes, including longest duration of abstinence and the percentage of negative drug tests. In combination with survey data, variation from the experiment will shed light on the barriers to abstinence more broadly and inform the understanding of optimal incentive design.

Clinical Trial of High Dose Lisdexamfetamine and Contingency Management in MA Users

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if administering a high dose stimulant with Contingency Management reduces days of use in adults who use methamphetamine better than the usual treatment provided by the clinic. The main questions the trial aims to answer are: Is a high dose stimulant better than a placebo and usual treatment at helping reduce the number of days they use methamphetamine? Is a high dose stimulant with contingency management better than placebo and usual treatment at helping people reduce the number of days they use methamphetamine? Participants will be placed randomly into one of four groups: 1. Usual treatment and placebo 2. Usual treatment, placebo and contingency management 3. Usual treatment and high dose stimulant 4. Usual treatment, high dose stimulant and contingency management Participation includes the following: 1. Participants will receive medication or placebo weekly for 15 weeks. 2. Participants will attend the clinic for weekly treatment 3. Participants will attend the clinic once every 2 weeks for study visits. Each visit will take about an hour to complete. At these visits, participants will be asked to provide a urine sample and complete questionnaires.

MHealth Incentivized Adherence Plus Patient Navigation

Polysubstance use involving opioids and methamphetamine is emerging as a new public health crisis. Patients with opioids and methamphetamine use often experience serious medical complications requiring hospitalization, which provides an opportunity to offer addiction treatment. Yet linkage to outpatient treatment post-discharge is suboptimal and methamphetamine exacerbates outcomes. The investigators propose to pilot test "MHealth Incentivized Adherence Plus Patient Navigation" (MIAPP) to promote treatment linkage and retention for patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) and methamphetamine use who initiate buprenorphine in the hospital. The investigators Aim is to perform a two-arm, pilot randomized clinical trial (n=40) comparing MIAPP + treatment-as-usual (TAU) versus TAU alone on outpatient medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) linkage within 30 days (primary) and 90-day retention on medications (secondary) among hospitalized patients with OUD and methamphetamine use.

Glutide for Ending Methamphetamine

GEM is a two-phase study to evaluate the use of semaglutide (Wegovy) for the treatment of methamphetamine use disorder (MeUD). The first phase is a pilot study, which will be an open-label, single-arm pilot study of 25 participants. Participants will receive Wegovy over a 12-week treatment period, with a subsequent follow-up visit at week 20. This phase will evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of Wegovy for MeUD. The second phase will be a phase IIb randomized-controlled trial to determine the efficacy of Wegovy in treating MeUD. This trial will be similar to the pilot with randomization to Wegovy or placebo and blinding of group assignment. The trial will enroll 162 participants across two sites.

The Human Stress Response in a Simulated ED Setting

Stress is important for health. As emergency departments (EDs) are often stressful places, a better understanding of the human stress response is important for understanding how and why patients respond as they do when they come to the ED. Since the investigators cannot take up space in the ED for research, the investigators will instead recruit 20 methamphetamine-using participants who are not currently in treatment and 10 healthy adult matched participants to a simulated ED room in the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Simulation Center. The investigators will have participants perform a stressor task involving public speaking and a simple arithmetic task. The investigators will see if this experiment can be made to be like being in an actual ED by varying what participants speak about in the task. By doing this, the investigators hope to find out several important things: 1) Is a stressor task feasible and acceptable to participants? 2) What does the stress response -- as measured by cortisol and alpha-amylase -- look like in these participants? 3) Does varying what participants talk about make the experiment seem more like an actual ED? 4) Do participants under stress show even mild symptoms of agitation as measured by clinical scales? If so, how often?

Inflammation in Methamphetamine and STIs (IMSTI)

This clinical trial aims to investigate the effects of a decline in methamphetamine use on rectal inflammatory cytokine levels, substance use contexts, and HIV/STI risk behavior. This clinical trial also seeks to evaluate joint effects of methamphetamine use and rectal gonorrhea/chlamydia infection on rectal inflammatory cytokine levels. The proposed trial will consist of 40 MSM, half with rectal gonorrhea/chlamydia infection at enrollment (n=20), with methamphetamine use disorder that will receive contingency management for methamphetamine reduction. Following baseline measurement, participants will be observed over the course of 8 weeks, where participants will complete behavioral surveys, provide urine for drug testing, and rectal samples for measurement of rectal inflammatory cytokine levels.

Role of Pavlovian Mechanisms for Control Over Substance Use

During the first funding period (1st FP), the investigators developed a novel full Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) task that allows assessing both, general and specific PIT to investigate whether specific PIT differs between alcohol use disorder (AUD) and control subjects. Preliminary analyses of the full transfer task indicate that AUD participants exhibit a stronger specific PIT effect compared to controls. Based on these findings, the investigators want to compare specific and general PIT effects in patients with moderate to severe substance use disorders (alcohol, cannabis, methamphetamine, amphetamine and cocaine) to healthy controls on the behavioral and neural level (fMRI).

Enhanced Digital-Chemosensory-Based Olfactory Training for Remote Management of Substance Use Disorders

The overarching goal of this study phase, Phase II component is to implement Enhanced Digital-Chemosensory-Based Olfactory Training for Remote Management of Substance Use Disorders (EDITOR) device in substance use disorder (SUD) clinics to demonstrate pilot effectiveness for SUD outcomes compared to treatment as usual (TAU) and Computerized Chemosensory-Based Orbitofrontal Networks Training (CBOT) device as active control. The investigators will conduct a multi-site study of 300 adult patients with opiate use disorder (OUD), stimulant (i.e., cocaine, methamphetamine) and/or alcohol use disorder (AUD) from community and clinics to evaluate whether EDITOR is associated with better patient treatment outcomes (e.g., retention in treatment and abstinence). The pilot study will provide preliminary data needed for design of a Phase III trial, including estimates of effect size. The investigators will also explore development of machine learning/AI algorithms integrating clinical and physiological data into treatment decision guides for providers.

PRevention Of Methamphetamine Use Among Postpartum Women Trial (PROMPT)

The PRevention Of Methamphetamine Use among Postpartum Women Trial (PROMPT) is randomized controlled trial of postpartum individuals with methamphetamine use disorder to 12 weeks of 200 mg oral micronized progesterone twice daily or placebo. The aims of this study are to assess the feasibility, safety and preliminary efficacy of micronized progesterone for the prevention of return to methamphetamine use. A secondary aim is to assess participant's salivary levels of allopregnanolone with methamphetamine cravings. This study has the potential to provide effective interventions to prevent methamphetamine use among postpartum women.

rTMS for Craving in Methamphetamine Use Disorder

The primary aim of this project is to use a randomized single-blind sham-controlled study to investigate if high frequency repetitive transmagnetic stimulation (HF-rTMS) can modulate cue-induced craving in adult methamphetamine (METH) users. The investigators hypothesize that HF-rTMS directed at left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) will result in a reduction in craving for METH compared to sham-controlled rTMS in adults with methamphetamine use disorder (MUD) as evidenced by validated measures of METH craving. Neurobiologically, the investigators anticipate rTMS mediated stimulation of the DLPFC could result in inhibition of cue-induced craving through potential disruption of involved circuitry. The current project proposes that participants who are recently abstinent from METH will be randomized into four experimental groups to provide two rTMS conditions (real versus sham) and two picture cues conditions (METH versus neutral). The experiment will have an induction phase where each subject will receive 10 daily treatments within 2 weeks. Just before each rTMS/sham session participants will be shown visual cues (METH or neutral). Participants will then undergo a maintenance phase for an additional month with assessments to evaluate craving and relapse. Urine samples for urine drug screening (UDS) will be collected at screening day and on days 1, 5 and 10. Just before each rTMS/sham session participants will be shown visual cues (METH and neutral). VAS craving scores will be assessed before and after picture presentation and after the rTMS/sham session. Before the first and 10th treatment session, participants were evaluated by the the Stimulant Craving Questionnaire (STCQ) and the Severity of Dependence Scale (SDS) questionnaires. Participants will then undergo a maintenance phase for an additional month. During the first week of maintenance, three rTMS/sham sessions will be administered. During each of the following 3 weeks, one rTMS/sham session will be given per week. As with the induction phase, urine samples will be collected for screening and STCQ and the SDS questionnaires will be completed at each maintenance session. To evaluate the long-term effects of the rTMS treatment, the investigators plan on contacting participants 6 months after treatment termination for all subjects who completed the 10 treatment sessions. During that phone conversation, craving and relapse will again be assessed.