The Safety, Tolerability, and Subject-Rated Effects of Acute Intranasal Cocaine Administration During Aripiprazole Maintenance

Abstract

Although cocaine dependence remains a significant public health concern, efforts to identify a pharmacotherapy have been unsuccessful. The purpose of this study was to assess the safety, tolerability, and subject-rated effects of intranasal cocaine during maintenance on aripiprazole, a novel antipsychotic with partial agonist activity at monoamine receptors implicated in the effects of cocaine. To this end, eight cocaine dependent subjects were maintained on 10 mg oral aripiprazole and placebo in counterbalanced order prior to assessing the physiological and subject-rated effects of intranasal cocaine (4, 20, 40, and 60 mg). Aripiprazole was generally devoid of effects, but did alter temperature-increasing and subject-rated effects of cocaine as a function of cocaine dose.

Keywords:

• Aripiprazole
• cocaine
• humans
• pharmacotherapy
• physiological effects