(McClatchy-Tribune Information Services) -- A Yale University physician is attending the Military Health Research Forum in Kansas City, Mo., this week to present her work helping veterans who suffer from both post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism.

Dr. Ismene Petrakis, acting chief of psychiatry at the Veterans Affairs medical center in West Haven and a professor at the Yale School of Medicine, is about to start a fouryear study of a blood-pressure medication, prazosin, which has been shown to be effective in treating both nightmares and alcohol dependency. The study is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense.

"Our hypothesis is that this may be a medicine that can treat both (PTSD and alcoholism) because it is not unusual to have both disorders," Petrakis said Tuesday from Kansas City. The forum ends today.

Petrakis' work to assist veterans has included two other studies, one of which is completed, in hopes of finding medications that will treat both disorders at once.

"There's clearly a link between the two," she said. "There's been a lot of hypotheses proposed -- that people drink to compensate for the symptoms of PTSD" or that people who are susceptible to one also are to the other.

However they're linked, the combination of PTSD and alcohol dependency can be devastating, she said, leading to more serious medical problems and a greater chance of relapsing.

In her first study, in which 93 veterans took part, the drugs naltrexone and disulfiram (Antabuse) were given alone or together, according to a press release on the forum Web site. "Patients with PTSD experienced less alcohol craving, used less alcohol, and had fewer psychiatric symptoms when taking medication (either or both of the drugs), compared to those on placebo," the release said.

Copyright (c) 2009, New Haven Register, Conn. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.