National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)

As scientific advances continue to expand our understanding of how alcohol affects human health and point to new ways to address alcohol-related harm, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) has released its 2017-2021 strategic plan for research. The new plan serves as a roadmap for optimizing the allocation of NIAAA’s resources to areas of alcohol research most...

Penny S. Mills, executive vice president and CEO of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), received the Senator Harold Hughes Memorial Award today from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), one of the National Institutes of Health. NIAAA Director George F. Koob, Ph.D., announced the Institute’s selection during the 146th meeting of the National Advisory Council...

Dysregulated cellular response to estrogen and progesterone suspected. National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers have discovered molecular mechanisms that may underlie a woman’s susceptibility to disabling irritability, sadness, and anxiety in the days leading up to her menstrual period. Such premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) affects 2 to 5 percent of women of reproductive age, whereas less severe premenstrual syndrome (PMS)...

November 30, 2018

Registration is now open for the 12 th annual National Drugs & Alcohol Chat Day, a live web chat between high school teenagers and addiction and mental health scientists. Chat Day will be held on January 24, during National Drug and Alcohol Facts Week ® , which runs from January 22–27, 2019. Registrations are confirmed on a first-come, first-served basis...

Tue, 08/06/2013 - 12:00

Tue, 08/06/2013 - 12:00

Recent research from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) sheds new light on habitual behaviors, specifically the circuits in the brain that allow mice to break from routine actions. Such shifting between old habits and new behavior aimed at accomplishing a particular goal are critical to flexible decision-making in everyday life. It also has important implications for...

June 23, 2015

The Research Society on Alcoholism ( RSA ) has selected David Goldman, M.D., of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) to receive the Distinguished Researcher Award. This award recognizes a senior researcher who, through sustained, long-term commitment to conducting alcohol research, has made outstanding scientific contributions to the field. Dr. Goldman is chief of the Laboratory of...

September 26, 2019

The latest article from Alcohol Research Current Reviews explores links between alcohol use and suicidal behavior. Research on associations of suicidal behavior, including suicide and suicide attempt, with alcohol use disorder (AUD) and acute use of alcohol (AUA) are discussed, with an emphasis on data from meta-analyses. Based on psychological autopsy investigations, results indicate that AUD is prevalent among individuals...

Observance to be held January 22-27, 2019, with new resources for parents and educators. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) announced today that event registration is open for the next National Drug & Alcohol Facts Week (NDAFW), to be held on Jan. 22-27, 2019. NDAFW is an annual, week-long...

Researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism have found that anticipation of increasing monetary rewards selectively activates the human nucleus accumbens of the ventral striatum. Since this brain region is implicated in animal studies of alcohol and drug self-administration, the research may help lead to methods for understanding the biological basis of alcohol and drug craving in...

In an article appearing in the May 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), addiction researchers at the National Institutes of Health compared marijuana use in the U.S. adult population in 1991-92 and 2001-02. They found that the number of people reporting use of the drug remained substantially the same in both time periods, but the...

NIH-funded study in mice merits further investigation as a potential treatment A specific strain of a common bacteria found in most people with alcoholic hepatitis correlates with greater liver disease severity and mortality, according to a new study published in Nature. Alcoholic hepatitis is a serious form of alcohol-associated liver disease, and people with it have high levels of the...

Joe Wang, Ph.D., DMHE Purpose Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) are a spectrum of lifelong, debilitating health deficits, affecting roughly 2-5% of all school-aged children in the US. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), the most serious form of FASD, is a developmental disorder characterized by craniofacial abnormalities, growth retardation, and nervous system dysfunction that may include mental retardation. Other FASD categories...

NIAAA/COGA DATA AND BIOMATERIALS DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT-- WAVE I and WAVE II WHEREAS, the national Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism ("NIAAA") pursuant to its public health mission to identify and characterize the genetic basis of alcohol-related disorders supports research projects in which there is collection by scientific investigators and their relatives; WHEREAS, anonymous blood samples obtained from Wave I and/or...

According to the results of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) study, reported in the December issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry (Volume 61), Mexican Americans and non-Hispanic Whites born in the United States have a higher risk for developing psychiatric disorders than their foreign-born counterparts who have immigrated to the United States. The psychiatric disorders included alcohol and...

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) Director Ting-Kai Li, M.D., has named Markus Heilig, M.D., Ph.D., as Chief of the Laboratory of Clinical Studies (LCS), and Clinical Director in NIAAA's Division of Intramural Clinical and Biological Research. "We are fortunate to have Dr. Heilig in these important positions," says Dr. Li. "He is an outstanding clinician and a...

Geoffrey K. Mumford, Ph.D., Associate Executive Director for Government Relations in the Science Directorate of the American Psychological Association (APA), received the Senator Harold Hughes Memorial Award today from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health. NIAAA Director George F. Koob, Ph.D., announced the Institute’s selection during the 151st meeting of...

A common genetic variant influences individual responses and adaptation to pain and other stressful stimuli and may underlie vulnerability to many psychiatric and other complex diseases, reports David Goldman, M.D., Chief, Laboratory of Neurogenetics, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and colleagues at NIAAA and the University of Michigan. COMT val 158met Genotype Affects m-Opioid Neurotransmitter Responses to a...

Bernice Porjesz, Ph.D., Department of Psychiatry, State University of New York, Health Sciences Center at Brooklyn, and others from six of the nine universities that comprise NIAAA's Collaborative Study of the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) report in today's online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (99[6]:3729-3733) significant linkage and linkage disequilibrium between beta brain wave (EEG)...

Open Session of the National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Agenda is now posted, and the webcast link is now available.

Mon, 03/31/2014 - 12:00

Mon, 03/31/2014 - 12:00

The working hypothesis to explain the progression from mild (fatty liver) to more severe forms of alcoholic liver disease (e.g., fibrosis, cirrhosis, alcoholic hepatitis and hepatocellular carcinoma) has been that alcohol requires a secondary initiator or trigger for this progression, or that alcohol is secondary to some other initiating event. Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection has been a strong candidate...