Active clinical trials for "Alcohol Drinking"

Choices Plus, a randomized controlled study, will determine the efficacy of the Project CHOICES intervention plus a referral to an evidence-based smoking cessation program in reducing the risk of alcohol- and tobacco-exposed pregnancies.

Moderate alcohol consumption is associated with a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. The association of alcohol consumption with cardiovascular disease is mediated by a functional polymorphism of alcohol dehydrogenase 1c, but the effect of this polymorphism on alcohol metabolism is only investigated in vitro. The risk reduction of moderate alcohol consumption for cardiovascular disease is explained largely by an increase of HDL cholesterol, but an increase of adiponectin concentrations after moderate alcohol consumption may also be involved. It seems likely that adiponectin is a mediator for the association of moderate alcohol consumption with type 2 diabetes. The mechanism by which moderate alcohol consumption increases adiponectin concentrations is unknown, but ppar-gamma activation may be involved. effects of this polymorphism on mediators of this relation are not known. This study therefore investigates the effect of moderate alcohol consumption and the influence of alcohol dehydrogenase 1c polymorphism on ppar-gamma activated gene expression and risk factors of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

We are currently working in 16 middle schools across Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Torrance to test out a voluntary after school program called Project CHOICE, which focuses on helping students decrease their alcohol and drug use. We are conducting surveys in all schools over three years and providing the intervention in 8 schools in the 2008-2009 school year and in the other 8 schools in the 2011-2012 school year. This is a program we have provided before in middle schools and we found that it was effective in curbing alcohol and drug use among students who voluntarily attended and among all students at the intervention school.

The overall objective of the proposed research is to reduce the incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among college students. The investigators propose to accomplish this by using the innovative, engineering-inspired multiphase optimization strategy (MOST) to develop a highly effective, appealing, economical, and readily scalable internet-delivered behavioral intervention targeting the intersection of alcohol use and sexual risk behavior. The rate of STIs on college campuses is alarming: one in four college students is diagnosed with an STI at least once during their college experience. Sexual activity when drinking alcohol is highly prevalent among college students. Alcohol use is known to contribute to the sexual risk behaviors that are most responsible for the transmission of STIs, namely unprotected sex, contact with numerous partners, and "hook-ups" (casual sexual encounters). Few interventions have been developed that explicitly target the intersection of alcohol use and sexual risk behaviors, and none have been optimized. In order to reduce the incidence of STI transmission among this and other high-risk groups, a new approach is needed. MOST is a comprehensive methodological framework that brings the power of engineering principles to bear on optimization of behavioral interventions. MOST enables researchers to experimentally test the individual components in an intervention to determine their effectiveness, indicating which components need to be revised and re-tested. Given the high rates of alcohol use and sex among college students, the college setting provides an ideal opportunity for intervening on alcohol use and sexual risk behaviors. The proposed study will include a diverse population of college students on 4 campuses which will increase the generalizability of the findings. The specific aims are to (1) develop and pilot test an initial set of online intervention components targeting the link between alcohol use and sexual risk behaviors, (2) use the MOST approach to build an optimized preventive intervention, and (3) evaluate the effectiveness of the newly optimized preventive intervention using a fully powered randomized controlled trial (RCT). This work will result in a new, more potent behavioral intervention that will reduce the incidence of STIs among college students in the US, and will lay the groundwork for a new generation of highly effective STI prevention interventions aimed at other subpopulations at risk.

This project aims to demonstrate the feasibility of a scalable behavioral intervention using smartphone-paired breathalyzers and text message aimed at reducing drinking and driving among individuals who report heavy drinking. All participants receive a smartphone breathalyzer to provide feedback on their estimated blood alcohol level. The intervention compares loss- and gain-framed messages that make the consequences of drinking and driving more salient to standard messages not to drink and drive.

Brief Interventions (BI) based on Motivational Interviewing are effective to reduce alcohol use. In this study the investigators test the hypothesis that that an open Mindset increases the positive effects of BI. Patients who are newly admitted to the psychotherapy outpatient clinic are routinely screened for risky alcohol use. All patients with risky alcohol use are eligible to the study and all receive the WHO's ASSIST-linked BI. Participants receive a brief Mindset induction prior to receiving BI. They are are randomly assigned to either the induction of an open or a closed Mindset according to Gollwitzer. The investigators measure the change in alcohol-related risk perception, treatment motivation and real alcohol drinking.

The objective of this study is to determine if, compared to placebo, zonisamide (400mg/day) is a safe and efficacious treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) in Veterans with PTSD and co-occurring AUD.

The purpose of this study is to develop a treatment that can effectively help people reduce their alcohol use and quit smoking.

While a large focus of research on U.S. college drinking has focused on the prevalence of and problems related to heavy-episodic drinking, less has focused on college students who are either abstainers or lighter drinkers (i.e., for men, drinking 4 or fewer drinks in two hours and 14 or fewer drinks per week; and for women drinking 3 or fewer in two hours and 7 or fewer drinks per week). Over 40% percent of college students ages 18-22 do not report drinking in the past month with only half of those engaging in regular heavy-episodic drinking. Research suggests that a significant proportion of students who were abstinent or light drinkers prior to and upon entering college initiate drinking and progress to becoming heavy-episodic drinkers. This provides evidence that the first few months of college is a high-risk time for initiating both drinking and heavy-episodic drinking and that delaying the onset of heavy-episodic drinking among light drinkers and abstainers should lead to reduced harms throughout the college years and young adulthood. Mobile phone-based interventions are an innovative method for reaching young people and have been established as an empirical approach towards addressing health issues, including alcohol use. The ultimate goal of this proposal is to develop, refine and pilot a text message (TM) intervention for abstainer and lighter drinking first year college students with the ultimate goal of delaying alcohol initiation and/or reducing alcohol use escalation. An iterative process of focus groups, intervention content development, and user feedback focused on the unique experiences of abstainers and lighter drinkers will inform the TM Intervention to be delivered in a pilot study with 6 weeks of TMs. The pilot study will include a 6 week post-intervention assessment, and 3, 6, and 9 month follow-ups among 100 incoming first year abstainer and lighter drinker college students. Given that reducing young adults' and college students' engagement in excessive alcohol use has been listed as a major objective of Healthy People 2020 and a key priority of NIAAA, an intervention that focuses on delaying alcohol initiation and escalation into higher-risk alcohol use among abstainer and lighter drinkers could make important strides to achieving this goal.

To further test the effectiveness of oxytocin in heavy drinkers, half of the cohort in the proposed study will meet criteria for heavy drinking (>35 standard drinks/week [men], >28 standard drinks/week [women] for at least 4 consecutive weeks). However, the investigators think it important to expand the cohort of the proposed study to include subjects with moderate Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) who meet lower drinking criteria so the outcome of the study will be relevant to a larger percentage of individuals who have AUD. The lower drinking criteria will be minimum of 14 drinks/week (women) or 21 drinks/week (men) with an average of at least two heavy drinking days (≥5 standard drinks for men and ≥4 standard drinks for women) each week in the 4-week period prior to screening. As in the R21-funded Preliminary Study, individuals recruited from the community who meet study criteria based on assessment during a screening clinic visit will be randomized to twice a day (BID) intranasal oxytocin or intranasal placebo during a subsequent clinic visit. After instruction by research staff during the randomization clinic visit, subjects will self-administer intranasal treatments from blind-labeled spray bottles that they take home. During clinic visits at 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 weeks after randomization, drinking since the last visit will be quantified and other measures summarized above will be obtained. Subjects will self-administer test intranasal treatments for 12 weeks. Drinking will also be quantified during clinic visits at 6 and 12 weeks after cessation of intranasal treatments. This clinical trial will be the first adequately powered, double blind, placebo-controlled trial examining the efficacy and tolerability of BID intranasal oxytocin (40 IU/dose; 80 IU/d) on alcohol drinking in AUD. The trial will also be the first to prospectively examine the effects of intranasal oxytocin on anxiety symptoms in individuals with AUD.