Trial reportNeuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology2023
N-acetylcysteine does not alter neurometabolite levels in non-treatment seeking adolescents who use alcohol heavily: A preliminary randomized clinical trial.
Trial report in Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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
11 citing papers in PubMed, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- A Randomized Controlled Trial of N-acetylcysteine for Adolescent and Young Adult Alcohol Use Disorder.Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · 2026Trial
- The Effect of N-Acetylcysteine (NAC) on Neurometabolites and Cognitive Function in Adults With Alcohol Use Disorder: A Preliminary Randomized Controlled Trial.Neuropsychopharmacology reports · 2025Trial
- The neural and psychophysiological effects of cannabidiol in youth with alcohol use disorder: A randomized controlled clinical trial.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Trial
- A single extinction-based treatment with N-Acetylcysteine produces long-term reduction in cocaine relapse.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Alcohol demand and alcohol use disorder among adolescents and young adults who drink heavily: An exploratory analysis including sex differences.Addictive behaviors · 2026Article
- Age- and alcohol-related differences in adolescent neurometabolite levels.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2026Article
- Effects of N-acetylcysteine treatment on frontal glutamate and GABA levels and associations with drinking quantity in people with co-occurring posttraumatic stress disorder and alcohol use disorder.Psychopharmacology · 2025Article
- Effect of N-acetylcysteine on neural alcohol cue reactivity and craving in adolescents who drink heavily: A preliminary randomized clinical trial.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2024Article
- Adolescent alcohol use is associated with differences in the diversity and composition of the oral microbiome.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2024Article
- Multi-modal neuroimaging reveals differences in alcohol-cue reactivity but not neurometabolite concentrations in adolescents who drink alcohol.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2024Article
- Pairwise comparisons of three medication adherence outcomes in adolescents who use alcohol.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
13 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Current treatments for adolescent alcohol use disorder (AUD) are mainly psychosocial and limited in their efficacy. As such, pharmacotherapies are being investigated as potential adjunctive treatments to bolster treatment outcomes. N-acetylcysteine is a promising candidate pharmacotherapy for adolescent AUD because of its tolerability and demonstrated ability to modulate glutamatergic, GABAergic, and glutathione systems. The primary objective of this double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subjects crossover preliminary investigation was to measure potential changes within glutamate + glutamine (Glx), GABA, and glutathione levels in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy during 10-days of N-acetylcysteine (1200 mg twice daily) compared to 10-days of placebo in non-treatment seeking adolescents who use alcohol heavily (N = 31; 55% female). Medication adherence was confirmed via video. Effects on alcohol use were measured using Timeline Follow-Back as an exploratory aim. Linear mixed effects models controlling for baseline metabolite levels, brain tissue composition, alcohol use, cannabis use, and medication adherence found no significant differences in Glx, GABA, or glutathione levels in the dACC after N-acetylcysteine compared to placebo. There were also no measurable effects on alcohol use; however, this finding was underpowered. Findings were consistent in the subsample of participants who met criteria for AUD (n = 19). The preliminary null findings in brain metabolite levels may be due to the young age of participants, relatively low severity of alcohol use, and non-treatment seeking status of the population investigated. Future studies can use these findings to conduct larger, well-powered studies within adolescents with AUD.
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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.