Trial reportAlcoholism, clinical and experimental research2020
Effects of Alcohol Cue Reactivity on Subsequent Treatment Outcomes Among Treatment-Seeking Individuals with Alcohol Use Disorder: A Multisite Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial of Varenicline.
Trial report in Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 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
25 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- Leveraging meta-regression to test if medication effects on cue-induced craving are associated with clinical efficacy.Psychopharmacology · 2024Pooled it
- Are medication effects on subjective response to alcohol and cue-induced craving associated? A meta regression study.Psychopharmacology · 2023Pooled it
- Preliminary effects of oral ANS-6637, an ALDH2 inhibitor, on cue-induced craving, safety and alcohol consumption among adults with alcohol use disorder: a proof-of-concept, randomized, human laboratory trial.Alcohol and alcoholism (Oxford, Oxfordshire) · 2025Trial
- Cue-exposure treatment influences resting-state functional connectivity-a randomized controlled fMRI study in alcohol use disorder.Psychopharmacology · 2024Trial
- A practice quit model to test early efficacy of medications for alcohol use disorder in a randomized clinical trial.Psychopharmacology · 2024Trial
- Alcohol use disorder severity moderates clinical response to varenicline.Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research · 2021Trial
- Combination Treatment With Varenicline and Nicotine Patch on Smoking Cessation Outcomes in Heavy Drinkers at 26-Week Follow-up.Journal of clinical psychopharmacologyTrial
- Article
- The alcohol cue-exposure paradigm as a screening tool for alcohol use disorder medication development: A critical review.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2025Review
- Who is alcohol cue-reactive? A machine learning approach.Alcohol and alcoholism (Oxford, Oxfordshire) · 2025Article
- Development and validation of an open-source virtual reality environment for alcohol use disorder and determinants of cue-induced craving among Indian participants.Indian journal of psychiatry · 2025Article
- A Secondary Analysis Suggests That Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Applied to the Left Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Reduces Cue-Induced-Craving in Treatment Seeking Participants with Cannabis Use Disorder.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Characterizing alcohol cue reactive and non-reactive individuals with alcohol use disorder.Addictive behaviors · 2024Article
- Beyond mediators: A critical review and methodological path forward for studying mechanisms in alcohol use treatment research.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2024Review
- Cannabis craving in response to alcohol cues in the laboratory and in daily life among adolescents ages 15-17 years.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2023Article
- Testing pharmacotherapies for alcohol use disorder with cue exposure paradigms: A systematic review and quantitative synthesis of human laboratory trial methodology.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2023Review
- Cannabis craving in response to alcohol cues among adolescents and young adults in the laboratory and in daily life.Experimental and clinical psychopharmacology · 2023Article
- Peer-elicited alcohol craving in adolescents and emerging adults: Bridging the laboratory and natural environment.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2023Article
- Electrophysiological Markers of Aberrant Cue-Specific Exploration in Hazardous Drinkers.Computational psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2023Article
- How laboratory studies of cigarette craving can inform the experimental alcohol craving literature.Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe alcohol cue reactivity paradigm is increasingly used to screen medications for the treatment of alcohol use disorder (AUD) and other substance use disorders. Yet, its prospective association with craving and naturalistic drinking outcomes in clinical trials remains unknown. This study embedded repeated human laboratory assessments of alcohol cue reactivity within the context of a randomized controlled trial to examine the effects of varenicline tartrate (Chantix DESIGN AND
methodsThis double-blind, randomized, 2-site study compared the effects of varenicline (up to 2 mg/d) and placebo on responses to in vivo alcohol cue and affective picture cue exposure in the human laboratory. Forty-seven volunteers (18 females, 29 males), ages 23 to 67 years (M = 43.7, SD = 11.5), were recruited from the community via advertisements to participate in a clinical trial designed to study the effects of varenicline on alcohol use. Participants were randomized to either varenicline or placebo for 6 weeks.
resultsVarenicline did not attenuate cue-induced alcohol craving relative to placebo, but craving captured during the cue reactivity paradigm significantly predicted subsequent alcohol use in real-world settings during the clinical trial. Higher craving predicted heavier alcohol use.
conclusionsOur results are among the first to show alcohol cue-induced craving captured during a human laboratory paradigm predicts drinking outcomes in the context of a clinical trial.
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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.