Progesterone Treatment for Cocaine-dependent Women: A Pilot Study

Primary Aims: The primary aims will be directed at treatment efficacy. Relatively unique to cocaine treatment trials, one of the principal outcome measures will be time to cocaine relapse. We hypothesize that maintenance on PROG will increase the time to cocaine relapse compared to maintenance on placebo (PBO). Another cocaine-related efficacy endpoint will be the proportion of patients who achieve at least 2 consecutive weeks of cocaine abstinence (based on urine toxicology results) during the double-blind treatment phase. Lastly, the proportion of cocaine-negative urines collected throughout the treatment trial will be measured. We hypothesize that women in the PROG group will show a greater reduction in cocaine use compared to those in the PBO group. Secondary Aims: 1) Determine if response to laboratory stressors will predict treatment outcome. We hypothesize that those women with the greatest stress response will do worse in treatment and that maintenance on PROG will reduce stress/anxiety and thereby improve treatment outcome. 2) Determine if treatment retention is better in the PROG group compared to the PBO group and determine if maintenance on PROG improves overall functioning compared to maintenance on PBO based on the Clinical Global Inventory (CGI). We hypothesize that women in the PROG group will have better treatment retention and improvement in CGI scores compared to women in the PBO group. Tertiary Aims: To conduct exploratory analyses to determine whether 1) trauma history is related to treatment outcomes and 2) improvements in treatment outcome measures are related to decreases in HIV high-risk behaviors.