A. Szegedi et al., Cue exposure in alcohol dependent patients: preliminary evidence for different types of cue reactivity, J NEURAL TR, 107(6), 2000, pp. 721-730
Craving is considered to be an important phenomenon in addictive behaviours
. However, there is still an unresolved debate on what craving for alcohol
means, how it is best measured and which clinical and therapeutical consequ
ences its presence or absence may imply. Cue reactivity paradigms have been
developed to elicit craving under standardized experimental conditions. He
re we present preliminary results characterizing alcohol-dependent patients
with regard to subjective and psychophysiological aspects of exposure to a
lcohol-associated cues in a cue reactivity paradigm.
Thirty-six patients fulfilling at least 5 criteria of alcohol dependence ac
cording to DSM-IV criteria were studied after detoxification. Cue reactivit
y was assessed as subjective (by visual analogue scales) and neurophysiolog
ical response (by ECC, EMG, electrodermal activity, respiratory frequency,
salivation) to the presentation of the favourite alcoholic beverage or wate
r. While 22% of the patients were both subjective and physiological respond
ers, 42% of the subjects showed only a physiological reaction without subje
ctive response, and 31% of the patients were neither a subjective nor a phy
siological reaction. Subjective responders to alcohol cues had significantl
y higher state anxiety levels than subjective non-responders.
These results suggest that alcohol dependent patients may be divided into t
ypological subgroups with respect to cue reactivity. Different types of cue
reactivity might be important for treatment strategies involving repeated
cue exposure or so-called anti-craving drugs.