Study results from the Clinical Trials Network’s first 10 years: Where do they lead?

The National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) began in 2000 with the goal of “improv[ing] the quality of drug abuse treatment throughout the country using science as the vehicle.” Since then, 24 discrete clinical trials were launched, 20 are completed, and 15 have published main outcome papers. Of the latter, 4 tested pharmacological treatment, 8 psychosocial/behavioral treatment, 1 a combination of medication and counseling, and 2 targeted HIV/hepatitis C virus risk behavior.

In this paper, the authors review main study findings for each of the 15 completed trials, including information about the dates of data collection, design, population, treatments, and results (primary, secondary, and treatment retention when analyzed). The purpose of this review is to identify the incremental progress toward improving drug treatment made by these trials and to propose next steps for the CTN and for the field arising from these studies. The CTN provides a unique opportunity to systematically design trials that incorporate treatment improvements from previous trials and to direct efforts toward innovations most likely to be incorporated into practice. Although the NIDA CTN has accomplished a considerable amount in its first 10 years of operation, it is clear that there is considerably more to accomplish to improve the quality of the research, as well as its dissemination, to fully realize the original goal of improving the quality of drug abuse treatment with science as the vehicle.

Related protocols: CTN-0001, CTN-0002, CTN-0003, CTN-0004, CTN-0005, CTN-0006, CTN-0007, CTN-0009, CTN-0010, CTN-0013, CTN-0015, CTN-0018, CTN-0019, CTN-0021