Publications by authors named "SALVATORE J"

Background: Early midlife individuals (ages 30-40) experience demographic shifts that may influence the remainder of adult life. Although new or persistent alcohol misuse is common during this period, early midlife is understudied in alcohol use literature. We examined the heritability of alcohol misuse; the associations between alcohol misuse and sociodemographic factors, physical health, and well-being; and whether these associations were robust in cotwin comparisons.

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Background: Associations between childhood trauma, neurodevelopment, alcohol use disorder (AUD), and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are understudied during adolescence.

Methods: Using 1652 participants (51.75% female, baseline = 14.

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Introduction: The New Jersey Kids Study (NJKS) is a transdisciplinary statewide initiative to understand influences on child health, development, and disease. We conducted a mixed-methods study of project planning teams to investigate team effectiveness and relationships between team dynamics and quality of deliverables.

Methods: Ten theme-based working groups (WGs) (e.

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  • A study using Swedish national register data involving over 2.8 million individuals investigated the relationship between divorce and family genetic risk scores (FGRS) for ten psychiatric disorders.
  • The findings revealed that individuals who experienced divorce had higher FGRS for all disorders compared to those who remained stably married or never married.
  • Additionally, divorced females exhibited higher FGRS than divorced males, and higher FGRS was linked to those who did not remarry or had multiple divorces, highlighting how genetic factors may influence both divorce rates and psychiatric risk.
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  • High BMI during adolescence is a strong predictor of obesity in adulthood, but the specific relationship isn't fully understood.
  • The study analyzed data from 1,400 Finnish twins over several years to explore how adolescent BMI influences adult weight changes, emphasizing genetic factors.
  • Results show that both genetic influences and adolescent BMI are associated with weight gain in adulthood, indicating that genetic predisposition in youth can lead to increased body weight later in life.
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Polygenic risk scores (PRSs) assess genetic susceptibility to alcohol use disorder (AUD), yet their molecular implications remain underexplored. Neuroimmune interactions, particularly in microglia, are recognized as notable contributors to AUD pathophysiology. We investigated the interplay between AUD PRS and ethanol in human microglia derived from iPSCs from individuals with AUD high-PRS (diagnosed with AUD) or low-PRS (unaffected).

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  • The study investigates how marriage impacts the risk of alcohol use disorder (AUD) among Swedes of different cultural backgrounds, utilizing national data from Sweden.
  • Results show that marriage generally reduces AUD risk, but the effect varies depending on cultural background, with males of Finnish descent experiencing less protection than those of Swedish descent.
  • Additionally, marrying someone from a foreign background increases AUD risk for individuals with a Swedish background, although this risk decreases when accounting for familial influences.
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Background And Aims: Studies on adolescent alcohol use and cognition are often unable to separate the potential causal effects of alcohol use on cognition from shared etiological influences, including genetic influences or other substance use comorbidities also known to be associated with cognition, such as nicotine use. The present study aimed to fill this gap and clarify the relationship between adolescent alcohol use and young adult cognition by accounting for both measured and unmeasured confounders.

Design: A random effects model accounting for nesting in families was used to control for measured confounders.

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Background: Online question banks are the most widely used education resource amongst medical students. Despite this there is an absence of literature outlining how and why they are used by students. Drawing on Deci and Ryan's self-determination theory, our study aimed to explore why and how early-stage medical students use question banks in their learning and revision strategies.

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We took a multilevel developmental contextual approach and characterized trajectories of alcohol misuse from adolescence through early midlife, examined genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences in those trajectories, and identified adolescent and young adult factors associated with change in alcohol misuse. Data were from two longitudinal population-based studies. FinnTwin16 is a study of Finnish twins assessed at 16, 17, 18, 25, and 35 years ( = 5659; 52% female; 32% monozygotic).

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Contemporary genome-wide association study (GWAS) methods typically do not account for variability in genetic effects throughout development. We applied genomic structural equation modeling to combine developmentally-informative phenotype data and GWAS to create polygenic scores (PGS) for alcohol use frequency that are specific to developmental stage. Longitudinal cohort studies targeted for gene-identification analyses include the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (adolescence n = 1,118, early adulthood n = 2,762, adulthood n = 5,255), the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (adolescence n = 3,089, early adulthood n = 3,993, adulthood n = 5,149), and the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC; adolescence n = 5,382, early adulthood n = 3,613).

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Background: Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use is increasing in the US and throughout the world. The use of magnets, magnetic fields, and copper devices (MMFC) for health care are CAM therapies. Available information suggests significant consumer spending on MMFC therapy, but minimal information exists on usage patterns.

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Purpose: Research-based theater uses drama to communicate research findings to audiences beyond those that typically read peer-reviewed journals. We applied research-based theater to translate qualitative research findings on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on different segments of U.S.

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Importance: Current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fifth Edition) (DSM-5) diagnoses of substance use disorders rely on criterion count-based approaches, disregarding severity grading indexed by individual criteria.

Objective: To examine correlates of alcohol use disorder (AUD) across count-based severity groups (ie, mild, moderate, mild-to-moderate, severe), identify specific diagnostic criteria indicative of greater severity, and evaluate whether specific criteria within mild-to-moderate AUD differentiate across relevant correlates and manifest in greater hazards of severe AUD development.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cohort study involved 2 cohorts from the family-based Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) with 7 sites across the United States: cross-sectional (assessed 1991-2005) and longitudinal (assessed 2004-2019).

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Some sources report increases in alcohol use have been observed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among women. Cross-sectional studies suggest that specific COVID-19-related stressful experiences (e.g.

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Alcohol use disorders (AUD) are commonly occurring, heritable and polygenic disorders with etiological origins in the brain and the environment. To outline the causes and consequences of alcohol-related milestones, including AUD, and their related psychiatric comorbidities, the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) was launched in 1989 with a gene-brain-behavior framework. COGA is a family based, diverse (~25% self-identified African American, ~52% female) sample, including data on 17,878 individuals, ages 7-97 years, in 2246 families of which a proportion are densely affected for AUD.

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The collaborative study on the genetics of alcoholism (COGA) is a multi-site, multidisciplinary project with the goal of identifying how genes are involved in alcohol use disorder and related outcomes, and characterizing how genetic risk unfolds across development and in conjunction with the environment and brain function. COGA is a multi-generational family-based study in which probands were recruited through alcohol treatment centers, along with a set of community comparison families. Nearly 18,000 individuals from >2200 families have been assessed over a period of over 30 years with a rich phenotypic battery that includes semi-structured psychiatric interviews and questionnaire measures, along with DNA collection and electrophysiological data on a large subset.

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Article Synopsis
  • * The study uses a family-based approach and incorporates various assessments, including clinical and neurophysiological data, to gain insights into the genetic risks and patterns of substance use disorders.
  • * COGA uniquely includes a significant number of participants of African ancestry and emphasizes data sharing, contributing to larger GWAS consortia, thereby enhancing research on the genetic factors influencing AUD.
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Objective: We sought to test the effects of different duration naps on post-nap cognitive performance during simulated night shifts.

Methods: We used a randomized laboratory-based crossover trial design with simulated 12-hr night shifts and each participant completing three conditions of 72 hrs each (Clinicaltrials.gov; registration # NCT04469803).

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Objective: Much of what is known about parental divorce and adult alcohol outcomes comes from cross-sectional comparisons of those who did and did not experience parental divorce. In contrast, far less is known about whether and how parental divorce is associated with alcohol consumption trajectories. We used a longitudinal perspective to investigate the associations between parental divorce and men's alcohol consumption trajectories as well as a genetically informative approach to evaluate whether the pattern of genetic and environmental influences on these trajectories differed for men who did and did not experience parental divorce.

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