Study: Migraine pill helps some alcoholics quit without detox

CHICAGO -- A migraine pill seems to help alcoholics taper off their drinking without detox treatment, researchers report, offering a potential option for a hard-to-treat problem.

The drug, Topamax, works in a different way than three other medications already approved for treating alcoholism.

Experts said the drug is likely to appeal to heavy drinkers who would rather seek help from their own doctors, rather than enter a rehab clinic to dry out. The drug costs at least $350 a month, plus the price of doctor's visits.

Addiction specialists not involved in the study said the findings are promising, although side effects such as trouble concentrating, tingling and itching caused about one in five people to drop out of the study. Drowsiness and dizziness are also problems.

The study, published in today's Journal of the American Medical Association, was funded by the maker of the drug, Johnson & Johnson Inc.'s Ortho-McNeil Neurologics.

At the start of the study, participants drank, on average, 11 standard drinks daily. That's about two six-packs of beer each day, or two bottles of wine, or a pint of hard liquor.

By the end of the study, 27 of the 183 people, or 15 percent, who took Topamax had quit drinking entirely for seven weeks or more. That compared to six out of 188, or 3 percent, in the placebo group.

Others cut back. The Topamax group cut back to six drinks a day, on average, assuming everyone who dropped out of the study relapsed into heavy drinking. That compared to seven drinks a day for the placebo group.

The drug works by inhibiting dopamine, the brain's "feel-good" neurotransmitters that are involved in all addictions, said Stephen Dewey, a neuroscientist the Brookhaven National Laboratory, who was not involved in the study but does similar research.