ArticleNeuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology2014
Acamprosate produces its anti-relapse effects via calcium.
Article in Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 67 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
67 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 140 citations in OpenAlex.
- Good Practice Guideline for Preclinical Alcohol Research: The STRINGENCY Framework.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2025Guideline
- [Pharmacological prophylactic treatment for relapse of alcohol dependence : Results of current meta-analyses].Der Nervenarzt · 2017Pooled it
- Engaging Gut-to-Brain Signalling to Treat Alcohol Use Disorder.Addiction biology · 2026Article
- The Role of the Ventral Tegmental Area in Reward and Addiction: A Comprehensive Review.Neurosciences (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) · 2026Review
- The effects of sub-chronic calcium treatment on ethanol-induced dopamine elevation and the alcohol deprivation effect in the rat.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- The impact of anti-craving medication on cue reactivity and abstinence in patients undergoing alcohol detoxification: some preliminary evidence from a retrospective event-related potentials study.Psychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Investigating pharmacotherapies for alcohol use disorder using Drosophila melanogaster.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2025Article
- A new module in the drug development process: preclinical multi-center randomized controlled trial of R-ketamine on alcohol relapse.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Article
- Next-generation biomarkers for alcohol consumption and alcohol use disorder diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment: A critical review.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2025Review
- The involvement of GABA-rho receptors in regulating ethanol-induced elevation of dopamine, glycine and taurine within the nucleus accumbens of Wistar rats.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2025Article
- Molecular Imaging Studies of Alcohol Use Disorder.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2025Review
- Orphan peptide and G protein-coupled receptor signalling in alcohol use disorder.British journal of pharmacology · 2024Review
- Acamprosate reduces ethanol intake in the rat by a combined action of different drug components.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Sodium acamprosate and calcium exert additive effects on nucleus accumbens dopamine in the rat.Addiction biology · 2022Article
- The effects of acamprosate on prefrontal cortical function are mimicked by CaCl2 and they are influenced by the history of alcohol exposure.Neuropharmacology · 2022Article
- Plasma calcium concentration during detoxification predicts neural cue-reactivity and craving during early abstinence in alcohol-dependent patients.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2022Article
- Article
- Neuroscientific Basis of Treatment for Substance Use Disorders.Noro psikiyatri arsivi · 2022Review
- SUBSTANCE USE AND ADDICTION AFFECT MORE THAN THE BRAIN: THE PROMISE OF NEUROCARDIAC INTERVENTIONS.Current addiction reports · 2021Article
- Recent Advances in the Potential of Positive Allosteric Modulators of the GABAB Receptor to Treat Alcohol Use Disorder.Alcohol and alcoholism (Oxford, Oxfordshire) · 2021Review
7 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
10 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Alcoholism is one of the most prevalent neuropsychiatric diseases, having an enormous health and socioeconomic impact. Along with a few other medications, acamprosate (Campral-calcium-bis (N-acetylhomotaurinate)) is clinically used in many countries for relapse prevention. Although there is accumulated evidence suggesting that acamprosate interferes with the glutamate system, the molecular mode of action still remains undefined. Here we show that acamprosate does not interact with proposed glutamate receptor mechanisms. In particular, acamprosate does not interact with NMDA receptors or metabotropic glutamate receptor group I. In three different preclinical animal models of either excessive alcohol drinking, alcohol-seeking, or relapse-like drinking behavior, we demonstrate that N-acetylhomotaurinate by itself is not an active psychotropic molecule. Hence, the sodium salt of N-acetylhomotaurinate (i) is ineffective in alcohol-preferring rats to reduce operant responding for ethanol, (ii) is ineffective in alcohol-seeking rats in a cue-induced reinstatement paradigm, (iii) and is ineffective in rats with an alcohol deprivation effect. Surprisingly, calcium salts produce acamprosate-like effects in all three animal models. We conclude that calcium is the active moiety of acamprosate. Indeed, when translating these findings to the human situation, we found that patients with high plasma calcium levels due to acamprosate treatment showed better primary efficacy parameters such as time to relapse and cumulative abstinence. We conclude that N-acetylhomotaurinate is a biologically inactive molecule and that the effects of acamprosate described in more than 450 published original investigations and clinical trials and 1.5 million treated patients can possibly be attributed to calcium.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.