Alcohol: Thiamine and or Magnesium 1

Summary

Patients who suffer Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) have a 30-80% incidence of thiamine deficiency causing Wernicke's Encephalopathy (WE). Intravenous (IV) thiamine replacement is standard practice in the treatment of alcoholic patients presenting to the Accident \& Emergency (A\&E) department, however routine co-supplementation with magnesium (administered IV as magnesium sulphate ), which is required as a co-factor for thiamine in some metabolic processes, e. g. on the activity of the enzyme transketolase in red blood cells, is not routine practice in the treatment of these patients. Without correction of concomitant magnesium deficiency there may be impaired utilisation of thiamine resulting in a failure to treat WE. This study is designed to determine if administration of magnesium to AUD patients affects red cell transketolasae and serum lactate concentrations by itself, or only acts to increase the effect of thiamine on the activity of this enzyme.

Timeline

Start

2016-12-16

Primary completion

2018-04-02

Completion

2018-06-19

Outcome

Missed primary endpoint

paper No significant difference was found between groups for the primary endpoint of change in ETKA. PMID 35484175 ↗

Publications

• Maguire D, Burns A, Talwar D, Catchpole A, Stefanowicz F, Ross DP, Galloway P, Ireland A, Robson G, Adamson M, Orr L, Kerr JL, Roussis X, Colgan E, Forrest E, Young D, McMillan DC. Randomised trial of intravenous thiamine and/or magnesium sulphate administration on erythrocyte transketolase activity, lactate concentrations and alcohol withdrawal scores. Sci Rep. 2022 Apr 28;12(1):6941. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-10970-x.

Drugs

Indications