The COMBINE Study was a multisite study designed to address whether naltrexone, acamprosate, or specialized counseling, called Combined Behavioral Intervention (CBI), when given in the context of a medical management (MM) approach, were individually better than placebo or whether combining them would be superior than any one treatment alone (aCOMBINE Study Research Group, 2003a).The results of this trial (Anton et al., 2006) indicated that naltrexone was superior to placebo on a number of drinking outcome variables, but results were largely observable only when naltrexone was used concomitantly with MM. Acamprosate was not effective and did not significantly contribute to the response of naltrexone alone. Overall, the COMBINE Study represents a rich clinical dataset from which to examine the effects of baseline glucose levels on treatment outcomes for alcoholism. As such, the goal of this secondary analysis of the COMBINE Study was to examine the link between blood glucose levels and both alcohol heavy drinking (expressed by the percentage of heavy drinking days; PHDD) and alcohol craving (measured by the Obsessive Compulsive Drinking Scale; OCDS) over the course of treatment. Specifically,
