Active clinical trials for "Alcohol Drinking"

New technologies offer potential ways to provide and deliver preventative interventions. With respect to unhealthy alcohol use, offering people tools to assess and manage their risk at any given time using their smartphone may represent an additional opportunity to disseminate preventative interventions. Nevertheless, there is a lack of knowledge on the acceptability and efficacy of smartphone applications for unhealthy alcohol use. Alcooquizz, a smartphone app, has been previously evaluated using a before/after design without randomization, with participants reporting reductions in drinking over time. The current trial proposes to conduct an RCT, comparing reductions in alcohol consumption between participants provided access to Alcooquizz to a no intervention control. Participants will be recruited through Amazon's MTurk crowdsourcing platform. Potential participants identified as problem drinkers based on an initial survey will be invited to complete another survey in 6 months time. Those who agree to be followed-up will be randomized to be provided a link to download the Alcooquizz app or to a no link control condition. At six-months post-baseline, the MTurk portal will be used to send invitation emails that contain a link to the follow-up survey that asks about their drinking and their impressions of the app. The primary hypothesis to be tested is that participants receiving access to the Alcooquizz app will report a greater level of reduction in number of drinks in a typical week between the baseline survey and six-month follow-up as compared to participants in the no information control condition.

There is a need to better understand the mechanisms underlying alcohol use and dependence in order to advance the clinical treatment of alcohol dependence. Here, the investigators will use Positron Emission Tomography to determine if there is an up-regulation of D3 receptors in the brains of subjects with alcohol use disorders. The investigators will also investigate the relationship between D3 binding and major phenotypes associated with alcohol use disorders, namely: alcohol cue induced craving and motivation to self-administer alcohol in the laboratory.

The proposed research will be the first study to focus on experimentally manipulating both injunctive and descriptive norms on social networking sites in order to elucidate the relationship between alcohol and abstainer displays on social networking sites and subsequent alcohol cognitions, use, and related negative consequences. Based on literature focusing on developmentally appropriate health models for adolescents, the Prototype Willingness Model (PWM) assumes that health-risk behaviors occur either when individuals have developed intentions to engage in a risk behavior (and these intentions vary as a function of attitudes and perceived injunctive norms) or through willingness to engage in risks (which varies as a function of perceived vulnerability to negative consequences, perceived descriptive norms , and prototypes). To fully understand the relationships between alcohol abstaining displays on social networking sites, we will examine 1) the role of descriptive and injunctive abstainer and user norms, when experimentally manipulated with SNS profiles, on willingness and intentions, subsequent alcohol use and related negative consequences among adolescents (age 1 5-20) 2) whether intentions and willingness mediate the relation between our experimental manipulation and subsequent alcohol use and negative consequences and whether 3) individual differences in social influence moderate the effect of the experimental manipulation on intentions, willingness, alcohol use, and negative consequences. We will test these aims by recruiting a community sample of adolescents (N = 300), living in the greater Seattle metropolitan area. Participants will complete a web-based baseline assessment and participate in an in-person experimental manipulation in which they are either assigned to see same-sex social networking site profiles of alcohol abstainers, abstainers +users, or a control condition where neither user or abstainer information will be provided. Immediately after the manipulation, participants will answer a series of questions about the profiles they just viewed and their alcohol-related cognitions. Participants will also complete a one-month in person follow up assessment to test for impacts on intentions, willingness, alcohol use, and related negative consequences. Additionally, individual differences in social influence will be examined as possible moderators o f the relationship between SNS-portrayed norms and our primary outcomes. This study is both significant and innovative in that it uses a theoretical perspective to experimentally test the impact of alcohol content, in particular abstainer norms, on Facebook on adolescent alcohol use and related cognitions. The results have the potential to inform preventative interventions while addressing NIH priorities.

This study will examine the effect of N-Acetylcysteine (NAC), an over-the-counter antioxidant supplement, on brains of youth (ages 15-19) using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

To determine whether alcoholics (AUD) have a greater rate of amyloid positivity (ABeta+) compared to an age-matched cognitively normal control group (HC).

The present study will evaluate college students (N=100) from 2- and 4-year colleges/universities between 21-24 years old to assess anxiety, affect, broad social motives (BSM) and peer group influences on drinking and other risk-taking behaviors. This study will employ two sound scientific methods for testing behavior during drinking events (i.e., lab alcohol administration and daily diary) and use novel strategies to compare results of these two methods in the same sample. Using an ad-lib drinking paradigm, students' risk-taking, as measured by the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), will be assessed when alone and during one of two randomly assigned peer group conditions (close friends or new peers). Participants will be allowed to freely drink (within safety limits) with their peer group prior to completing the BART again. These same students will complete daily electronic diaries on four weekends (Thursday - Sunday; total 24 assessments) regarding BSM, motives to drink, peers in their social group, alcohol use and consequences, and if/how their social group changed (e.g., few close friends to large party with many new peers) during the drinking event. Competing hypotheses will be tested such that: 1) anxiety is expected to be a stronger predictor of drinking behavior and greater differences in risk-taking in the new peer condition than close friend condition or 2) BSM is expected to be a stronger predictor of drinking behavior and greater differences in risk-taking in the close friend condition than new peers condition. Results are expected to be replicated in the daily diary reports. Further, this multimethod approach will allow us to evaluate how behavior assessed in the lab predicts naturally occurring behaviors in an uncontrolled setting. For example, the investigators will assess whether greater increases in self-reported risk-taking from baseline to after entering peer groups in the bar lab setting will predict heavier drinking on nights when most drinking companions are close friends reported during daily diary.

Unhealthy alcohol use is a major contributor to morbidity and mortality in the US. Although effective prevention for unhealthy alcohol use and medication treatment for alcohol use disorders (AUDs) can be provided in primary care (PC), they have historically not been included in routine services. As a result, most patients do not receive evidence-based prevention or treatment for unhealthy alcohol use. Several efforts have successfully implemented alcohol-related preventive care-referred to as screening and brief intervention (SBI), but efforts to increase treatment of AUDs with medications have been less successful. Moreover, implementation efforts have usually neglected smaller PC practices, in which most PC is provided. The Michigan SPARC trial is a partnership between Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI) in Seattle, bringing extensive expertise implementing evidence-based alcohol-related care, and Altarum Institute in Ann Arbor, Michigan, bringing demonstrated success engaging over 500 small to medium Michigan-based PC practices in effective quality improvement (QI) efforts. The project builds on Altarum's innovative approach to implementing new or improved clinical care using practice facilitators to provide continuing medical education and maintenance of certification (CME/MOC) programs to PC providers, along with ongoing support for QI using evidence-based implementation strategies. The KPWHRI team recently finished the highly successful AHRQ-funded Sustained Patient-centered Alcohol-Related Care (SPARC) trial using similar implementation strategies in KP Washington, including use of electronic health records and performance monitoring and feedback, and also developed a patient decision aid to support shared decision-making between patients with high-risk drinking and/or AUDs and their PC providers. The Michigan SPARC trial combines Altarum's expertise in QI in small-medium PC practices in Michigan with KPWHRI's expertise implementing evidence-based prevention and treatment of unhealthy alcohol use-specifically alcohol SBI and medication treatment for AUDs. Specific Aims of the Michigan SPARC trial had to be markedly modified due to the trial beginning in March 2020 at the same time as the COVID pandemic. A trial was not possible. The revised aims were to describe alcohol screening, brief intervention, AUD diagnosis and initiation of medication treatment for AUD, before and after the Michigan SPARC model was implemented, in small to medium PC practices in Michigan.

The study objective was to evaluate the safety of ten consecutive days of therapeutic acetaminophen dosing in moderate alcohol consumers. The main outcome was liver injury (measured by an increase in mean serum ALT or AST levels). Patients were randomly assigned to 10 days of acetaminophen or placebo. Blood tests were measured at baseline, day 4 and day 11 to look for injury. We hypothesized that there would be no difference in liver enzymes between the two groups.

Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) is prevalent, devastating, and difficult to treat. The intransigence of AUD is readily apparent in the Trauma Unit of Wake Forest University Baptist Hospital, wherein 23% of trauma related admissions are associated with alcohol - higher than the national average of 16%. Of these trauma related admissions, over 70% are estimated to have AUD and 41% will be likely be admitted to the trauma unit again within 5 years. While Dr. Veach (Co-Investigator) and her team in the Department of Surgery have demonstrated that a brief counseling intervention on the inpatient trauma unit can decrease morbidity and recidivism, the rates of AUD and relapse to drinking among these individuals remains very high. With a growing knowledge of the neural circuits that contribute to relapse in AUD, there is an emerging interest in developing a novel, neural-circuit specific therapeutic tool to enhance AUD treatment outcomes. This will be achieved through a double-blind, sham-controlled cohort study in heavy alcohol drinkers with a history of alcohol-related injury. The brain reactivity to alcohol cues (Incentive Salience) and cognitive performance in the presence of an alcoholic beverage cue (Cognitive Control) will be measured immediately before and after participants receive real or sham intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS- a potentiating form of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)) to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC iTBS). The goals of this pilot study are to quantify the acute effect of a single session of real or sham dlPFC iTBS on brain response to alcohol cues (Aim 1) and cognitive flexibility in the presence of an alcohol cue (Aim 2) among risky drinkers (target engagement ).

Although correct, consistent condom use can greatly reduce sexually transmitted infections and unplanned pregnancies, resistance of condom use is common among young adults. Young men's alcohol intoxication and sexual aggression history are predictive of greater condom use resistance and other sexual risk behaviors (e.g., unprotected sex). Moreover, emotional factors may play a role in these associations, suggesting a promising avenue for continued research. This project builds upon our prior research through investigation of the emotional mechanisms involved in young men's alcohol-related sexual risk behavior. This research addresses a critical knowledge gap and advances the field through the use of multiple methods designed to evaluate distal and proximal emotional factors implicated in alcohol-related sexual risk. Male drinkers aged 21-30 who use condoms inconsistently (N = 420) will first complete a screening procedure followed by a baseline survey that will assess relevant constructs, including emotional traits, emotion dysregulation tendencies, and alcohol expectancies. They will then complete a 30-day daily diary assessment of their daily emotional states, daily coping motives pertaining to drinking and sex, and daily drinking and sexual risk behaviors to evaluate daily relationships among these factors. The same participants will complete an in-lab experiment assessing in-the-moment effects of alcohol intoxication and provocation on emotional states and sexual risk intentions. Statistical analyses will be used to examine the daily influence of emotional states and coping motives on alcohol consumption and sexual risk behaviors and the experimental effects of alcohol intoxication and provocation on emotional states and other mediators, as well as sexual risk intentions. Moderating effects of emotion dysregulation tendencies will also be examined, and the linkages between event-level and experimental relationships will be investigated. This research is both significant and innovative in that it will address the public health concern of men's sexual risk behaviors, including condom use resistance; will evaluate the role of emotional processes in men's alcohol-related sexual risk; and will use multiple methods to gather complementary types of data that will elucidate the mechanisms underlying alcohol-related sexual risk behaviors and provide an empirical evidence base from which to develop and inform prevention and intervention programs.