Novel Methods to Study Substance Use in College Students

描述(申请人提供)：压力和负面影响相关的饮酒和药物使用(SNAD)是一种特别重要的不适应物质使用(SU)模式，在青少年和大学生中会导致负面后果(例如，学业和人际问题增加，酒后驾车，犯罪活动，以及卷入令人遗憾的性行为)。考虑到与这些结果相关的公共健康风险，该项目试图聘请一个跨学科团队来确定在大学生中促进SNAD的因素。紧急研究表明，两类因素--社会学习因素以及压力和情感反应的遗传变异--是参与SNAD的重要风险。本研究的目的是开发和完善跨学科的研究方法，考察候选基因变异与情绪、心理期望和生活压力之间的交互作用，以加深我们对大学生SNAD的理解。我们将在700名大学生的样本中，同时考察社会学习和遗传易感性在饮酒或吸毒应对压力和情感相关触发因素中的作用。鉴于这类研究在少数族裔人群中相对较少，我们将在以非裔美国人(AA)为主的大学校园内进行这项研究。这个项目将联合两个以前孤立的关于SU行为的研究，社会学习和遗传学，以便在两个层面上研究SNAD：人与人之间的(宏观)层面，即社会学习因素和基因如何与主要生活压力因素相互作用，影响平均SU；以及个人(微观)层面，即社会学习因素和基因如何与日常应激源相互作用，在日常基础上影响SU。这项研究将涉及一个跨学科调查团队的合作努力，他们对与物质使用和依赖相关的行为的心理社会、遗传和内分泌基础进行研究。该项目是两个私人投资机构在过去两年中最近启动的合作的结果和延伸，并应用了长达一个月的强大的每日数据采集方法和DNA收集/基因分型。我们将用唾液皮质醇测量下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺(HPA)轴的活性来加强这些测量，作为个体对应激反应的生物学测量。在宏观和微观层面上了解社会学习和遗传风险因素对SNAD的贡献是重要的，因为它将通过潜在地及早识别包括酒精和药物使用障碍在内的SU问题的最大风险的个人，从而为预防工作提供信息。结果还可能使将特定治疗方法与个人的脆弱性相匹配成为可能。大学生酗酒吸毒是一个重要的公共卫生问题。新出现的研究表明，社会学习因素与个体遗传变异和生活压力相互作用，影响不适应物质使用行为的风险。这项提案寻求开发强大而新颖的方法，使用基于互联网的技术来捕获与物质使用相关的大学生生活事件和行为的日常数据，并将这些信息与与应激反应相关的基因自然变异的新兴知识相结合。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Stress- and negative-affect related drinking and drug use (SNAD) is an especially important maladaptive substance use (SU) pattern that results in negative outcomes (e.g. increased academic and interpersonal problems, driving under the influence of alcohol, delinquent activity, and getting involved in regrettable sexual situations) in adolescents and college students. Given the public health risk associated with these outcomes, this project seeks to engage an interdisciplinary team to identify the factors that promote SNAD in college students. Emergent research suggests that two classes of factors - social learning factors and genetic variation in stress and affective reactivity - represent important risks for engagement in SNAD. The goal of the proposed research is to develop and refine interdisciplinary methodologies to examine the interaction of variation in select candidate genes with mood, psychological expectancies, and life stress to enhance our understanding of college students' SNAD. We will simultaneously examine the roles of social learning and genetic vulnerabilities for engaging in drinking or drug use in response to stress- and affect-related triggers in a sample of 700 college students. In view of the relative paucity of research of this kind in minority populations, we will conduct this study at a college campus with a predominantly African American (AA) student body. This project will unite two previously isolated lines of research on SU behavior, social learning and genetics, in order to investigate SNAD at two levels of analysis: the between-person (MACRO) level, i.e., how social learning factors and genes interact with major life stressors to influence average SU, and the within-person (MICRO) level, i.e., how social learning factors and genes interact with daily stressors to influence SU on a day-to-day basis. This study will involve collaborative efforts by an inter-disciplinary team of investigators who conduct research on the psychosocial, genetic, and endocrine bases of behavior related to substance use and dependence. This project is an outgrowth and extension of recently initiated collaborations of the two PIs over the past 2 years and applies the use of robust month-long daily data capture methodologies and DNA collection/genotyping. We will augment these measures with a salivary cortisol measure of hypothalamic- pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity as a biological measure of inter-individual responses to stress. Understanding the contributions of social learning and genetic risk factors to SNAD at both macro and micro levels is important, as it will inform prevention efforts by potentially allowing early identification of individuals at greatest risk for problem SU, including alcohol and drug use disorders. Results may also make it possible to match specific treatments to individuals' vulnerabilities. Alcohol and drug use among college students is an important public health issue. Emerging research suggests that social learning factors interacting with individual genetic variation and with life stress influence the risk of maladaptive substance use behavior. This proposal seeks to develop robust and novel methodologies to use internet-based technologies to capture daily data about college student life events and behavior related to substance use, and to integrate this information with emerging knowledge about natural variation in genes related to stress reactivity.