Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatr. Sep 19, 2019; 9(5): 78-82
Published online Sep 19, 2019. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v9.i5.78
Substance use disorders among older adults: A review of randomized controlled pharmacotherapy trials
Rajesh R Tampi, Aarti Chhatlani, Hajra Ahmad, Kripa Balaram, Joel Dey, Ricardo Escobar, Thejasvi Lingamchetty
Rajesh R Tampi, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Cleveland Clinic Akron General, Ohio, NH 44106, United States
Rajesh R Tampi, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44109, United States
Aarti Chhatlani, Savant Care Clinic, California, CA 90277, United States
Hajra Ahmad, Kripa Balaram, Joel Dey, Ricardo Escobar, Thejasvi Lingamchetty, Department of Psychiatry, MetroHealth, Cleveland, OH 44109, United States
Hajra Ahmad, Kripa Balaram, Joel Dey, Ricardo Escobar, Thejasvi Lingamchetty, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, OH 44109, United States
Author contributions: Ahmad H, Balaram K, Dey J, Escobar R, Lingamchetty T ,performed an analysis of existing data on the subject and wrote the paper; Chhatlani A headlined the project and edited the paper at its various stages; Tampi R provided instruction through correspondence and was the main editor of the paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors of this study have no conflicts of interest to report.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Rajesh R Tampi, MD, Chairman, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Cleveland Clinic Akron General, 1 Akron General Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, NH 44106, United States.rajesh.tampi@gmail.com
Telephone: +1-330-3446992 Fax: +1-330-3442943
Received: April 29, 2019
Peer-review started: April 29, 2019
First decision: April 30, 2019
Revised: August 1, 2019
Accepted: August 6, 2019
Article in press: August 7, 2019
Published online: September 19, 2019
Processing time: 143 Days and 6.1 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Substance use disorder is a growing problem among the older adult population. Unfortunately, there is very limited controlled research data on pharmacotherapy to help with this situation. Our review indicates benefits for naltrexone in the treatment of alcohol use disorder, but we were not able to find data regarding pharmacotherapy for any other substance use disorder among older adults. This review is our attempt to draw attention towards the topic of substance use disorder treatment among older adults and to encourage further research in this field.