Novel Methods to Study Substance Use in College Students

描述（由申请人提供）：压力和负面影响相关的饮酒和吸毒（SNAD）是一种特别重要的适应不良物质使用（SU）模式，会导致青少年和大学生的负面结果（例如增加学术和人际关系问题，在酒精影响下驾驶，违法活动，以及参与令人遗憾的性行为）。考虑到与这些结果相关的公共卫生风险，该项目旨在聘请一个跨学科的团队来确定促进大学生SNAD的因素。紧急研究表明，两类因素-社会学习因素和压力和情感反应的遗传变异-代表参与SNAD的重要风险。拟议研究的目标是开发和完善跨学科方法，以检查选择候选基因中的变异与情绪，心理预期和生活压力的相互作用，以增强我们对大学生SNAD的理解。我们将同时研究社会学习和遗传脆弱性的作用，从事饮酒或吸毒，以应对压力和影响相关的触发器在700名大学生的样本。鉴于这种研究在少数民族人口中的相对缺乏，我们将在一所大学校园进行这项研究，主要是非洲裔美国人（AA）的学生团体。该项目将结合SU行为，社会学习和遗传学的两个先前孤立的研究路线，以便在两个分析层次上研究SNAD：人与人之间（MACRO）层次，即，社会学习因素和基因如何与主要生活压力源相互作用，以影响平均SU和人内（微观）水平，即，社会学习因素和基因如何与日常压力源相互作用，以影响SU的日常基础。本研究将涉及跨学科研究人员团队的合作努力，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PI在过去两年中最近发起的合作的产物和延伸，并应用了强大的为期一个月的每日数据采集方法和DNA收集/基因分型。我们将增加这些措施与唾液皮质醇测量下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺（HPA）轴的活动作为一个生物措施的个体间的反应，以压力。了解社会学习和遗传风险因素在宏观和微观层面对SNAD的贡献是重要的，因为它将通过可能允许早期识别问题SU（包括酒精和药物使用障碍）风险最大的个体来为预防工作提供信息。研究结果还可能使针对个人脆弱性的具体治疗方法相匹配。大学生酗酒和吸毒是一个重要的公共卫生问题。新的研究表明，社会学习因素与个体遗传变异和生活压力相互作用，影响适应不良的物质使用行为的风险。该提案旨在开发强大且新颖的方法，使用基于互联网的技术来捕获有关大学生生活事件和与药物使用相关的行为的日常数据，并将这些信息与有关压力反应相关基因自然变异的新知识整合起来。

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.