Epi-Genetic Modulators of Fear Extinction in Alcohol Dependence
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT02438969. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.
Official title
(Epi)Genetic Modulators of Fear Extinction in Alcohol Dependence
Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
Background: \- Researchers want to learn if people with alcohol dependence have more difficulty learning to feel calm, or learn to fear things more easily. They also want to study how early life stress (ELS) affects the ability to learn to feel calm. Objective: \- To see if people with alcohol dependence and/or ELS have a harder time learning to feel calm than people without these. Also, to see if DNA is changed by ELS and if this change affects fear conditioning and extinction. Eligibility: * Adults ages 21-65 with and without an alcohol use disorder (AUD) and with and without ELS. * Healthy volunteers. Design: * Participants will be screened with: * Medical history * Physical exam * Blood and urine tests * Psychological tests * Treatment for symptoms of alcohol withdrawal, if needed * Healthy volunteers will have 1 overnight visit (2 days, 1 night). AUD participants will stay at the clinic for about 4 weeks. * Participants will: * Rate alcohol use/craving, depression, anxiety, and childhood trauma. * Have psychophysiological measures: electrodes and mild electric shock. * Have a functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. Participants will lie on a table in a metal cylinder with a coil over their head. In the first scanning session, they will see pictures, do a simple task, and may get shocks. Participants will also do a second scanning session in which they will perform the aforementioned fear conditioning and extinction task, as well as a facial expression matching task, an affective word processing task, and a task measuring valuation of monetary rewards. * Answer questions about their emotions (some participants). * Have blood drawn from an arm vein or intravenous (IV) line. * AUD participants will get a dexamethasone pill. The next day, they will get a hormone injected in and have blood drawn from an IV line. * AUD participants will have 3 follow-up visits with questions and blood and lab tests.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT02438969
- Recruitment status
- Completed
- Study type
- Observational
- Phase
- Not listed
- Enrollment
- 96 participants
Conditions and interventions
Conditions
Interventions
Not listed
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 21 Years to 65 Years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Accepts healthy volunteers
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Aug 12, 2015
- Primary completion
- Dec 29, 2022
- Completion
- Dec 30, 2022
- Last update posted
- Feb 16, 2026
2015 – 2022
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 1
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 1
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| National Institutes of Health Clinical Center | Bethesda | Maryland | 20892 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT02438969, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Feb 16, 2026 · Synced Sep 2, 2026
Related: full search, browse by condition, browse by drug or therapy, browse by sponsor, browse by U.S. city.
Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT02438969 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.