Publications by authors named "Kevin Gray"

Introduction: Concerns about potential side effects remain a barrier to uptake of Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved smoking cessation pharmacotherapy [i.e., varenicline, bupropion, nicotine replacement therapy (NRT)].

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Background: Alcohol and cannabis are commonly used together by young adults. With frequent pairings, use of one substance may become a conditioned cue for use of a second, commonly co-used substance. Although this has been examined for alcohol and cannabis in laboratory conditions and with remote monitoring, no research has examined whether pharmacologically induced cross-substance craving occurs in naturalistic conditions.

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Cannabis is the most used federally illicit drug in the United States (U.S). Understanding how accurate adolescents and emerging adults are at estimating their cannabis use quantity is important, as this lays the groundwork for understanding and studying the outcomes associated with cannabis use.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study explored the relationship between reduced cannabis use and improvements in related problems and overall functioning among individuals in treatment for cannabis use disorder.
  • Data from seven treatment trials with 920 participants were analyzed using various outcome measures to assess changes in cannabis use and associated improvements.
  • Findings indicated that a significant reduction in cannabis use (approximately 50% fewer days and 75% less amount used) correlated with positive outcomes in clinician assessments, suggesting that decreasing cannabis consumption could benefit those with use disorder.
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In a recent 12-week smoking cessation trial, varenicline tartrate failed to show significant improvements in enhancing end-of-treatment abstinence when compared with placebo among adolescents and young adults. The original analysis aimed to assess the average effect across the entire population using timeline followback methods, which typically involve overdispersed binomial counts. We instead propose to investigate treatment effect heterogeneity among latent classes of participants using a Bayesian beta-binomial piecewise linear growth mixture model specifically designed to address longitudinal overdispersed binomial responses.

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Article Synopsis
  • A study analyzed fMRI data from treatment-seeking participants with cannabis use disorder to examine how their brains reacted to cannabis-related cues compared to neutral cues.
  • The researchers found increased brain activity in areas related to reward processing and decision-making when participants viewed cannabis images, with a notable connection between the medial prefrontal cortex and the amygdala.
  • Interestingly, higher levels of craving were linked to decreased responses in the ventral striatum, suggesting complex interactions between craving and cue-reactivity in this population.
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  • Research highlights a critical gap in understanding long COVID (PASC) in children and emphasizes the need for studies that define its characteristics in this age group.
  • The objective is to identify common prolonged symptoms in children aged 6 to 17 post-SARS-CoV-2 infection, examining differences between school-age kids and adolescents, as well as potential symptom clusters for future research.
  • A multicenter study involved nearly 5,000 participants, revealing that certain symptoms were significantly more prevalent in those with a history of COVID-19 compared to those without.
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  • The study examines the feasibility of using near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy for rapid monitoring of biomass conversion processes, proposing it as a quicker and less resource-intensive alternative to traditional methods like gas or liquid chromatography.
  • Multivariate calibration models were developed to measure soluble xylo-oligosaccharides (XOS), monomeric xylose, and total solids, with improved performance observed when segregating samples by process location rather than combining them.
  • The research concludes that real-time monitoring of key biomass components with NIR spectroscopy and multivariate statistics is effective, especially when the spectral range used in calibration models is reduced for better efficiency.
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Background: Alcohol craving is related to problematic alcohol use; therefore, pharmacotherapies that modulate alcohol craving are of interest. N-acetylcysteine, an over-the-counter antioxidant, is a candidate pharmacotherapy for adolescent alcohol use with the potential to impact craving. Cue-reactivity paradigms using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can identify neural regions implicated in craving and serve as a screening tool for novel pharmacotherapy options.

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Importance: The prevalence, pathophysiology, and long-term outcomes of COVID-19 (post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 [PASC] or "Long COVID") in children and young adults remain unknown. Studies must address the urgent need to define PASC, its mechanisms, and potential treatment targets in children and young adults.

Observations: We describe the protocol for the Pediatric Observational Cohort Study of the NIH's REsearching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative.

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Objective: Substance use initiation during early adolescence is associated with later development of substance use and mental health disorders. This study used various domains to predict substance use initiation, defined as trying any nonprescribed substance (e.g.

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Given the popularity and ease of single-item craving assessments, we developed a multi-item measure and compared it to common single-item assessments in an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) context. Two weeks of EMA data were collected from 48 emerging adults (56.25% female, 85.

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Introduction: Prior systematic and meta-analytic reviews observed mixed evidence for the efficacy of cannabis brief interventions (BIs). Inconsistent support for cannabis BIs may be the result of intersecting methodological factors, including intervention structure and content, participant eligibility criteria, and outcome assessment measures. The current systematic review of cannabis BI studies narratively synthesizes these data to guide intervention development decision-making in future cannabis BI studies (PROSPERO CRD42022285990).

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Background: The objective of this multi-modal neuroimaging study was to identify neuroscience-informed treatment targets for adolescent alcohol use disorder (AUD) by examining potential neural alterations associated with adolescent alcohol use.

Methods: Adolescents (ages 17-19) who heavily used (n=49) or did not use alcohol (n=22) were recruited for a multi-modal neuroimaging protocol, including proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy within the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and an fMRI alcohol cue-reactivity task. The alcohol cue-reactivity task was analyzed across 11 a priori regions-of-interest (ROI), including the dACC, and in an exploratory whole-brain approach.

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Early positive subjective effects of cannabis predict the development of cannabis use disorder (CUD). Genetic factors, such as the presence of cytochrome P450 genetic variants that are associated with reduced Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) metabolism, may contribute to individual differences in subjective effects of cannabis. Young adults (N = 54) with CUD or a non-CUD substance use disorder (control) provided a blood sample for DNA analysis and self-reported their early (i.

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Purpose Of Review: The aim is to review recent literature on sex and gender differences in patterns of use, motives, pharmacological effects, and consequences of simultaneous alcohol and cannabis use (SAC).

Recent Findings: Men engage in SAC more frequently than women. Women may have more substance-specific motives for use, while men tend to consistently endorse social/enhancement motives for both alcohol and cannabis.

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Background: Accurate assessment of medication adherence is important for understanding pharmacotherapy outcomes across all phases of adolescent substance use disorder (SUD) clinical trials. The objective of this study was to describe and assess the pairwise concordance between three commonly used non-biological medication adherence assessment methods in adolescents who use alcohol to inform the selection of medication adherence measures for use in future youth SUD trials.

Methods: Participants (N = 32, 17-19-years-old) took N-acetylcysteine and placebo, in a randomized cross-over design, for 10 days each.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study used fMRI to analyze cue-reactivity in individuals with cannabis use disorder (CUD) who were actively seeking treatment.
  • Participants, after 24 hours of abstinence, viewed cannabis-related images and their brain activity was measured, revealing increased activation in areas linked to executive function and reward processing.
  • Higher craving levels were negatively connected with brain activity in the ventral striatum, indicating a complex relationship between craving and neural responses to cannabis cues.
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Although cannabis is a naturally occurring plant with a long history of use by humans, the chemicals it contains, called cannabinoids, can act on the human body in many ways. Use of cannabis during important periods of development, such as during pregnancy and adolescence, can have a long-lasting impact on the way the brain forms and develops its systems to control emotions and other functions. This article gives an overview of some of the effects of cannabinoids on the developing brain, before birth and as teenagers, and provides information about how young people can prevent or minimize the negative effects of cannabis on their brains.

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Timeline followback (TLFB) is often used in addiction research to monitor recent substance use, such as the number of abstinent days in the past week. TLFB data usually take the form of binomial counts that exhibit overdispersion and zero inflation. Motivated by a 12-week randomized trial evaluating the efficacy of varenicline tartrate for smoking cessation among adolescents, we propose a Bayesian zero-inflated beta-binomial model for the analysis of longitudinal, bounded TLFB data.

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Young adulthood remains a developmental period in which cigarette smoking initiation and progression to dependence and regular use is common. Moreover, co-use of alcohol and/or cannabis with tobacco is common in this age group and may have detrimental effects on tobacco use rates and cessation outcomes. Although young adults are interested in quitting smoking, achieving abstinence remains difficult, even with evidence-based treatment strategies.

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With increasing cannabis potency, increasing variety of methods of cannabis use, and lower perceived risk of cannabis use, it is increasingly important clinicians who work with adolescents remain up-to-date on the latest literature regarding cannabis use and its associated outcomes. Adolescent cannabis use is associated with chronic cognitive, psychosocial, psychiatric, and physical outcomes. Clinicians working in this field should be able to recognize cannabis use disorder, understand how adolescent cannabis use can impact the developing mind, and have informed discussions with patients and families regarding risks of use.

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Background: As summarised in the most recent Cochrane review, the few clinical trials on e-cigarettes are largely focused on smoking cessation. We aimed to determine the naturalistic uptake, use, and impact of e-cigarettes among adults who may or may not want to stop smoking.

Methods: In this naturalistic, randomised, controlled clinical trial, adult smokers, across the motivational spectrum and with minimal history of e-cigarette use, were recruited online from the general community within 11 cities across the USA.

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