Project Status:

Dr. Treloar Padovano graduated as CADRE Research Project Lead after receiving an R01 in 2023. She is currently a Co-Investigator of the Team Science Supplement.

Description:

This study unites a team of addiction scientists and hepatologists for a partnership between the COBRE Center for Addiction and Disease Risk Exacerbation, Brown University Health Hepatology Clinic at Rhode Island Hospital, Providence VA Medical Center, and other Brown University networks, and provides a platform for future work testing AUD interventions integrated with AALD care. The primary aim of this proposal is to demonstrate the feasibility of implementing a brief psychosocial AUD intervention integrated with AALD medical care.

The intervention will include personalized feedback from biomarkers of liver function, drinking patterns, and self-monitoring of craving and negative affect via smartphone reports in daily life. Excessive drinkers (n = 44) consuming >24g/>36g per day, on average, for women/men in the past month, will be recruited from local hospitals, clinics, and the greater community. Half of our participants will have advanced AALD and AUD, and half will have AUD without AALD, with groups matched on drinking level. Recruitment will target equal representation of men and women and oversample for 1/3 individuals of Hispanic ethnicity. The protocol includes a 1-week screening phase, 3-week intervention phase, and 3-month follow-up.

In addition to demonstrating feasibility, this project aims to test whether behavioral endophenotypes associated with alcohol-use outcomes in clinical trials are more resistant to change during AUD intervention for AALD patients with AUD relative to those with AUD only. A final aim is to explore biomarkers of inflammation and immune activation as mechanisms of persistence of endophenotypes, specifically levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines, chemokines, and others implicated in the pathogenesis of AALD.

Mentors:

Peter Monti, Ph.D., Brown University
Kittichai Promrat, MD, Brown University Health
Jessica Mellinger, MD, MSc, University of Michigan

Research Team:

Gabriel Muro, Senior Research Assistant