Publications by authors named "Schuckit M"

Background: Preliminary evaluations of 212 drinking offspring from the San Diego Prospective Study (SDPD) indicated that over 50% developed alcohol use disorder (AUD) by their mid-20s. The present analysis evaluated if those findings remained robust when the group increased to 454 individuals, a sample size that facilitated a search for potential contributors to the high AUD prevalence.

Methods: Semistructured interviews were used to evaluate lifetime AUD diagnoses in 224 daughters and 230 sons from the SDPS (N = 454) by mean age 26.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: These analyses use data from a 40-year prospective study to extend information into the sixth and seventh decades of life regarding latent trajectory classes of cannabis use and predictors of those classes.

Method: Data from the San Diego Prospective Study were analyzed for 329 men of European and Hispanic ethnicity who had used cannabis at about age 23 at study entry (Time 1) and who were interviewed about every 5 years through about age 60 to 70. Latent classes of cannabis use trajectories were evaluated using latent class growth analyses, baseline predictors of class membership were determined, and significant predictors of each class were established using logistic regression analyses.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Amygdala function underlying emotion processing has been shown to vary with an individuals' biological sex. Expanding upon functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) findings reported previously where a low level of response was the focus, we examined alcohol and sex effects on functional connectivity between the amygdala and other brain regions. The central hypothesis predicted that sex would influence alcohol's effects on frontal-limbic functional circuits underlying the processing of negative and positive facial emotions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: In the United States, ~50% of individuals who meet criteria for alcohol use disorder (AUD) during their lifetimes do not remit. We previously reported that a polygenic score for AUD (PGS ) was positively associated with AUD severity as measured by DSM-5 lifetime criterion count, and AUD severity was negatively associated with remission. Thus, we hypothesized that PGS would be negatively associated with remission.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

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).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

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.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Alcohol use is influenced by genetic and environmental factors. We examined the interactive effects between genome-wide polygenic risk scores for alcohol use (alc-PRS) and social support in relation to alcohol use among European American (EA) and African American (AA) adults across sex and developmental stages (emerging adulthood, young adulthood, and middle adulthood). Data were drawn from 4,011 EA and 1,274 AA adults from the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism who were between ages 18-65 and had ever used alcohol.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

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.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Memory problems are common among older adults with a history of alcohol use disorder (AUD). Employing a machine learning framework, the current study investigates the use of multi-domain features to classify individuals with and without alcohol-induced memory problems. A group of 94 individuals (ages 50-81 years) with alcohol-induced memory problems (the memory group) were compared with a matched control group who did not have memory problems.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Researchers have identified genetic and neural risk factors for externalizing behaviors. However, it has not yet been determined if genetic liability is conferred in part through associations with more proximal neurophysiological risk markers.

Methods: Participants from the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism, a large, family-based study of alcohol use disorders were genotyped and polygenic scores for externalizing (EXT PGS) were calculated.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Several personality traits predict future alcohol problems but also relate to demographic and substance-related variables that themselves correlate with later adverse alcohol outcomes. Few prospective studies have evaluated whether personality measures predict alcohol problems after considering current demographic and substance-related variables.

Methods: Data from 414 drinkers without alcohol use disorder (AUD) from the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (average age 20, 44% male) were followed over an average of 9 years.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Endorsement of specific Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition (DSM-IV) alcohol use disorder (AUD) criteria have been shown to change significantly over time in men in their thirties who have persistent or recurrent AUD. However, few studies have documented whether the endorsement of AUD items changes over time in younger individuals or in women. We evaluated changes in the endorsement of AUD criteria in 377 men and women with persistent or recurrent AUD during their twenties.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Parents impact their offspring's brain development, neurocognitive function, risk, and resilience for alcohol use disorder (AUD) via both genetic and socio-environmental factors. Individuals with AUD and their unaffected children manifest low parietal P3 amplitude and low frontal theta (FT) power, reflecting heritable neurocognitive deficits associated with AUD. Likewise, children who experience poor parenting tend to have atypical brain development and greater rates of alcohol problems.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Hypothesis: Risk for cannabis use and schizophrenia is influenced in part by genetic factors, and there is evidence that genetic risk for schizophrenia is associated with subclinical psychotic-like experiences (PLEs). Few studies to date have examined whether genetic risk for schizophrenia is associated with cannabis-related PLEs.

Study Design: We tested whether measures of cannabis involvement and polygenic risk scores (PRS) for schizophrenia were associated with self-reported cannabis-related experiences in a sample ascertained for alcohol use disorders (AUDs), the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Some styles of alcohol consumption are riskier than others. How the level and rate of alcohol exposure contribute to the increased risk of alcohol use disorder is unclear, but likely depends on the alcohol concentration time course. We hypothesized that the brain is sensitive to the alcohol concentration rate of change and that people at greater risk would self-administer faster.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We tested whether aspects of the childhood/adolescent home environment mediate genetic risk for alcohol problems within families across generations. Parental relationship discord and parental divorce were the focal environments examined. The sample included participants of European ancestry (N = 4806, 51% female) and African ancestry (N = 1960, 52% female) from the high-risk Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Substance use disorders (SUDs) incur serious social and personal costs. The risk for SUDs is complex, with risk factors ranging from social conditions to individual genetic variation. We examined whether models that include a clinical/environmental risk index (CERI) and polygenic scores (PGS) are able to identify individuals at increased risk of SUD in young adulthood across four longitudinal cohorts for a combined sample of N = 15,134.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • GWAS in admixed populations like African Americans show limited sample sizes, impacting the effectiveness of polygenic risk scores (PRS) for diseases like alcohol use disorder (AUD).
  • A novel gene-based PRS framework was developed using 858 variants located within 410 disease-associated genes that are relevant in both African American and European ancestry populations.
  • The study found that this gene-based PRS significantly predicted AUD risk better than traditional methods, with the highest PRS decile showing a 76% increased odds of developing AUD, and identified genes potentially useful for drug repurposing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: To examine associations between alcohol use disorder (AUD), its psychiatric comorbidities, and their interactions, with marital outcomes in a diverse high-risk, genetically informative sample.

Method: Participants included European ancestry (EA; = 4,045) and African ancestry (AA; = 1,550) individuals from the multigenerational Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) sample (56% female, ∼ 41 years). Outcomes were lifetime marriage and divorce.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aims: To describe the clinical course and symptom profile of DSM-IV Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) and the syndrome of Adult Antisocial Behavior Syndrome (AABS) and determine if they differ based on sex and race.

Methods: Using questions from a validated semi-structured interview, data were gathered from 2 independent family studies in: 1) American Indians (AI), and 2) European Americans (EA), African Americans (AA) (total n = 7171) who reported antisocial symptoms.

Results: Within these two samples 1148 (16%) individuals met ASPD criteria, 1932 (27%) met adult ASPD but not childhood conduct disorder (CD) (i.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Early identification of individuals at high risk for alcohol use disorder (AUD) coupled with prompt interventions could reduce the incidence of AUD. In this study, we investigated whether Polygenic Risk Scores (PRS) can be used to evaluate the risk for AUD and AUD severity (as measured by the number of DSM-5 AUD diagnostic criteria met) and compared their performance with a measure of family history of AUD.

Methods: We studied individuals of European ancestry from the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * This study used fMRI data from 108 young participants to analyze the relationship between low LR and functional connectivity in brain regions like the amygdala during emotional face recognition tasks after either a placebo or alcohol.
  • * Results indicated that low LR individuals exhibited significantly lower functional connectivity between the amygdala and areas of the frontal lobe and insula, particularly after alcohol consumption, suggesting impaired emotional processing networks in these individuals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The article is part of a special collection marking the 50th anniversary of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), which began in 1970.
  • NIAAA is the largest funding body for alcohol research globally and supports a wide range of studies aimed at addressing alcohol use disorder and related issues.
  • A two-day symposium titled "Alcohol Across the Lifespan" was held to discuss significant research findings, and the article is based on a presentation given by Dr. Schuckit during this event, edited by NIAAA Director George F. Koob, Ph.D.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) alcohol use disorder (AUD) criteria are written in broad enough terms to apply to diverse populations. The current analyses evaluate whether the endorsement of criteria changes with increasing age in individuals with persistent AUDs.

Methods: Data regarding AUDs persisting across 3 timepoints between average ages of 31 and 43 were gathered about every 5 years from 318 interviews for 106 San Diego Prospective Study (SDPS) AUD male probands.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF