Development and correlates of alcohol use from ages 13-20

Impacts of maternal separation stress on ethanol intake and endocannabinoid system in adolescent mice

Clinical and preclinical studies suggest that early life stress can increase the risk of developing ethanol use disorder later in life. Although the endocannabinoid (eCB) system plays a role in stress-related behaviors and ethanol consumption, it remains unclear whether the eCB system is affected in response to a combination of both factors. By using male and female adolescent C57BL/6J mice subjected to a maternal separation (MS) stress paradigm from postnatal day (PND) 1 to 14, we explored (1) the consequences of early life stress experiences on ethanol consumption in adolescent mice and (2) how these events affect the eCB system and neuronal activation in brain regions associated with the reward system. In Experiment 1, we found that MS increased involuntary ethanol consumption specifically during the first exposure to the drug (during a 24 h-long trial on PND 28) and decreased the active/inactive nose poke ratio (discrimination index) specifically when mice were subjected to 1 h-sessions (PND 82-86) in an operant ethanol self-administration paradigm. In Experiment 2, during a two-bottle free choice paradigm, we found that MS increased mice preference for high ethanol concentrations (15 % and 20 %) but not lower ethanol concentrations (5 % and 10 %). Except for Mgll gene expression in the dorsal striatum (DS) in Experiment 2, no statistically significant effects of MS were observed regarding neuronal activation on the prefrontal cortex, DS, globus pallidus, and substantia nigra following a binge operant ethanol self-administration session (Experiment 1) or the eCB system molecules (Cnr1 and Faah gene expression) in the DS (Experiment 2).

Sleep-Related Predictors of Risk for Alcohol Use and Related Problems in Adolescents and Young Adults

PURPOSE

Growing evidence supports sleep and circadian rhythms as influencing alcohol use and the course of alcohol use disorder (AUD). Studying sleep/circadian-alcohol associations during adolescence and young adulthood may be valuable for identifying sleep/circadian-related approaches to preventing and/or treating AUD. This paper reviews current evidence for prospective associations between sleep/circadian factors and alcohol involvement during adolescence and young adulthood with an emphasis on the effects of sleep/circadian factors on alcohol use.

SEARCH METHODS

The authors conducted a literature search in PsycInfo, PubMed, and Web of Science using the search terms "sleep" and "alcohol" paired with "adolescent" or "adolescence" or "young adult" or "emerging adult," focusing on the title/abstract fields, and restricting to English-language articles. Next, the search was narrowed to articles with a prospective/longitudinal or experimental design, a sleep-related measure as a predictor, an alcohol-related measure as an outcome, and confirming a primarily adolescent and/or young adult sample. This step was completed by a joint review of candidate article abstracts by two of the authors.

SEARCH RESULTS

The initial search resulted in 720 articles. After review of the abstracts, the list was narrowed to 27 articles reporting on observational longitudinal studies and three articles reporting on intervention trials. Noted for potential inclusion were 35 additional articles that reported on studies with alcohol-related predictors and sleep-related outcomes, and/or reported on candidate moderators or mediators of sleep-alcohol associations. Additional articles were identified via review of relevant article reference lists and prior exposure based on the authors' previous work in this area.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

Overall, the review supports a range of sleep/circadian characteristics during adolescence and young adulthood predicting the development of alcohol use and/or alcohol-related problems. Although sleep treatment studies in adolescents and young adults engaging in regular and/or heavy drinking show that sleep can be improved in those individuals, as well as potentially reducing alcohol craving and alcohol-related consequences, no studies in any age group have yet demonstrated that improving sleep reduces drinking behavior. Notable limitations include relatively few longitudinal studies and only two experimental studies, insufficient consideration of different assessment timescales (e.g., day-to-day vs. years), insufficient consideration of the multidimensional nature of sleep, a paucity of objective measures of sleep and circadian rhythms, and insufficient consideration of how demographic variables may influence sleep/circadian-alcohol associations. Examining such moderators, particularly those related to minoritized identities, as well as further investigation of putative mechanistic pathways linking sleep/circadian characteristics to alcohol outcomes, are important next steps.

Fathers' alcohol consumption and risk of substance-related disorders in offspring

BACKGROUND

Few studies have assessed how children are affected by parental alcohol consumption without clinically diagnosed alcohol problems, especially in relation to more long-term and severe consequences. The aim is to investigate how fathers' alcohol use is related to the risk for substance-related disorders in offspring.

METHOD

A prospective cohort study of 64 710 Swedish citizens whose fathers were conscripted for compulsory military training at ages 18-20 in 1969/70. Information on fathers' alcohol consumption, frequency of intoxication and apprehended for drunkenness, was collected during conscription. Offspring was followed for substance-related disorders from age 12 to end of follow up in 2009.

RESULTS

All measures of fathers' alcohol use were significantly and positively associated with risk for substance-related disorders in offspring. The associations were to a large extent explained by other risk factors in childhood. In the fully adjusted model, those with fathers in the highest alcohol consumption quintile still had a 63% higher risk (HR=1.63 CI 1.26-2.12) of substance-related disorders compared to those whose fathers' reported abstinence. The highest risk was found among offspring to fathers with alcohol-related disorders or that had been apprehended for drunkenness, with a more than two-fold increased risk for substance-related disorders.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite the lower risk found among offspring to fathers with sub-clinical drinking when compared to those with alcohol-related disorders, the former group accounts for a much larger proportion of all cases of substance-related disorders in the population, prompting universal prevention efforts targeting the level of total alcohol consumption in society.

The Relationship Between Parent Drinking and Adolescent Drinking: Differences for Mothers and Fathers and Boys and Girls

BACKGROUND

Gender differences in the relationship between parent drinking and adolescent drinking are poorly understood. As parental alcohol use is a primary early exposure to alcohol for adolescents, it is important to understand how consequences may differ for adolescent males and females.

OBJECTIVES

The aim of this paper was to examine gender differences in the relationship between mother's and father's heavy episodic drinking, and its combination, and adolescent drinking.

METHODS

The sample included 2,800 14-15 year olds (48.9% female) living in two-parent households from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. The adolescent outcome measure was having had an alcoholic drink in the past year. Mothers and fathers self-reported their frequency of heavy episodic drinking. Covariates included parents' education, smoking, non-English-speaking background, and symptoms of psychological distress. Logistic regression was used to examine the hypotheses.

RESULTS

After adjustment for covariates, both mothers' and fathers' heavy episodic drinking significantly increased the likelihood of adolescent drinking. Moreover, fathers' heavy drinking was more strongly related to adolescent drinking for girls. However, there were no gender differences in the relationship between mothers' drinking and adolescent drinking, and the combination of mothers' and fathers' drinking was not more risky than heavy drinking in either parent alone.

CONCLUSIONS

Parent heavy episodic drinking is a risk factor for adolescent drinking, after controlling for potential confounding variables. Results suggest that girls may be especially vulnerable to parent heavy drinking in early adolescence. This variation should be considered in the design and evaluation of family-based interventions to prevent adolescent drinking.

Frequency of Parent-Adolescent Alcohol-Specific Communication and Adolescent Perceptions of Alcohol

To better understand the optimal frequency of parent-adolescent alcohol-specific communication, we conducted a secondary analysis of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse Culture of High School Survey, a 2010 nationally representative online survey of 1000 high school students. Logistic regression models assessed the relationship between alcohol-specific communication and adolescent perceptions ( binge drinking is very dangerous, drinking is cool, and getting drunk is very dangerous), adjusting for grade, sex, race, personal and peer alcohol use, and parental monitoring. Among adolescents reporting personal and peer alcohol use, a dose-response relationship existed between frequency of alcohol-specific communication and thinking binge drinking is very dangerous (often [adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 7.98; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 2.98-21.36], sometimes (AOR = 6.08; 95% CI = 2.36-15.69), rarely (AOR = 5.27; 95% CI = 1.95-14.26) vs never), and was also associated with decreased perceptions that drinking is cool (often [AOR = 0.22; 95% CI = 0.08-0.66), rarely vs never [AOR = 0.17; 95% CI = 0.06-0.51]); the inverse was true for never-drinkers without peer use.

Environmental risks outweigh dopaminergic genetic risks for alcohol use and abuse from adolescence through early adulthood

BACKGROUND

Alcohol use is a primary public health concern, particularly among adolescents and young adults. Based on the rapidly growing field of gene-environment models, this study assessed the combined role of environmental and dopamine-related genetic correlates of early alcohol use and abuse.

METHODS

Multilevel growth models assessed trajectories of alcohol use and intoxication and ordered logistic regressions assessed alcohol use disorder among a sample of 12,437 youth from the nationally representative Add Health study who were followed from mid-adolescence through early adulthood.

RESULTS

Endogenous and exogenous stressful life events and social norms supportive of alcohol use from parents and peers were significant predictors of alcohol use, intoxication, and alcohol use disorder, with consistent patterns across males and females. In contrast, a dopamine-system genetic risk score (GRS) was not associated with alcohol use trajectories nor alcohol use disorder in early adulthood, although weak connections emerged between the GRS and growth trajectories of intoxication, indicating that higher GRS predicted more frequent episodes of intoxication during the transition to adulthood but not during adolescence or later 20s. No evidence of gene-environment interactions emerged.

CONCLUSIONS

Results extend a substantial body of prior research primarily assessing single genetic polymorphisms in the dopamine system, suggesting that dopaminergic GRSs may be associated with more problematic alcohol behaviors at some developmental periods, but further, that social norms and stressful life experiences are more consistent correlates of early and problematic alcohol use among youth. These environmental factors present potential targets for research manipulating contexts to identify causal pathways.

Does parental drinking influence children's drinking? A systematic review of prospective cohort studies

AIMS

To evaluate evidence of the capacity for causal inference in studies of associations between parental and offspring alcohol consumption in the general population.

METHODS

A systematic search for, and narrative analysis of, prospective cohort studies of the consequences of drinking, except where assessed prenatally only, or with clinically derived instruments. Primary outcome measures were alcohol use or related problems in offspring, which were collected at least 3 years after exposure measures of parental drinking. The systematic review included 21 studies comprising 26,354 families or parent-child dyads with quantitative effect measures available for each study. Criteria for capacity of causal inference included (1) theory-driven approach and analysis; (2) analytical rigour; and (3) minimization of sources of bias.

RESULTS

Four of the 21 included studies filled several, but not all, criteria and were assessed to have some capacity for causal inference. These four studies found some evidence that parental drinking predicted drinking behaviour in adolescent offspring. The remaining 17 studies had little or no such capacity.

CONCLUSIONS

There is a fairly large and consistent literature demonstrating that more parental drinking is associated with more drinking in offspring. Despite this, existing evidence is insufficient to warrant causal inferences at this stage.

Assembling Interrelations Between Low Socioeconomic Status and Acute Alcohol-Related Harms Among Young Adult Drinkers

It is well established that alcohol-related harm is disproportionately prevalent among low socioeconomic status (SES) drinkers despite their lower consumption of alcohol, but epidemiological investigations have been unable to explain those links causally. I argue that this inability arises from the consumption-as-harm proposition, which proceeds from the assumption that alcohol acts in stable and predictable ways. In this model, “social factors” have been associated with increasing or decreasing harms by modulating consumption, but their other transformations of alcohol effects have not been registered. Stepping away from this model, I deploy the notion of the causal assemblage, which was developed in science and technology studies and has recently been applied in studies of alcohol and other drug (AOD) use. I analyze data from interviews with a convenience sample of low SES young adult drinkers and develop case studies of drinking events. I demonstrate that, in the case studies, alcohol-related harms are co-produced by troubled family and ethnic patterns of relations to alcohol and associated memories, enforcement of gender norms in public spaces, and a lack of access to private drinking settings. These insights are significant because they make visible the social forces co-producing alcohol-related harms and demonstrate the limitations of a model of causality commonly deployed in AOD studies.

Substance abuse In Middle Eastern adolescents living in two different countries: spiritual, cultural, family and personal factors

It is estimated that the percentage of students using illicit substances by sixth grade has tripled over the last decade not only in developed countries but in developing countries as well probably due to the transition to a more Western society. Although much has been done to understand the mechanisms underlying substance abuse, few studies have been conducted with minority ethnic and religious groups such as Middle Eastern Youth. The primary goal of this study was to determine whether there are differences in factors contributing to substance abuse in adolescents from Lebanon versus the U.S.A. and to decipher the role of spirituality, religion, and culture among other factors that may influence substance abuse. A correlational cross-sectional design was used with adolescents living in two different countries: Los Angeles, California and Beirut, Lebanon. Muslim adolescents had significantly less rates of alcohol and substance use than Christians in both Lebanon and Los Angeles. More years lived in the U.S.A. increases the likelihood of abuse for both Muslims and Christians. Attachment to God and family was negatively associated with substance abuse. These results among others facilitate a better understanding of the influence of culture, religion, family and personal factors on substance abuse. Culturally sensitive interventions could benefit from the findings of this pilot study.