National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)

November 8, 2013, 8:30am – 5:30 pm Room 24, San Diego Convention Center 8:30 am - Welcome / Opening Remarks Kenneth Warren, Ph.D. Acting Director, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Antonio Noronha, Ph.D., Director, Division of Neuroscience and Behavior, NIAAA 8:40 am - Overview on brain pathways to recovery from alcohol dependence Changhai Cui, Ph.D., Program Director, Division...

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...

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism today announces a 5-year prospective study on the role of alcohol use and abuse in determining patient outcomes for aging veterans with and without HIV infection. The study is an expansion of the ongoing Veterans Aging Cohort Study (VACS), initiated in 1999 and supported by a number of NIH components including the...

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory report in the current Journal of Neurochemistry (Volume 78, Number 5) that they used gene therapy techniques to increase levels of dopamine D2 (DRD2) receptors and reduce drinking in rats previously trained to self-administer alcohol. Panayotis Thanos, Ph.D., Nora Volkow, Ph.D., and colleagues used a partially inactivated virus as a...

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...

Michael Fleming, M.D., M.P.H., and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison report in the April 2 Journal of the American Medical Association results from Project TrEAT (Trial for Early Alcohol Treatment), the first large U.S. clinical trial to test the effectiveness of brief physician advice for intervening with nondependent problem drinkers. Supported by a grant from...

Alcohol Damage Bethesda, Maryland . Researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Brockton/West Roxbury Veterans Administration Medical Center report in today's issue of The Journal of Cell Biology a molecular action of alcohol that may produce some of the damage seen in fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and fetal alcohol effects (FAE). The same mechanism may play a role in such...

Fri, 09/17/2010 - 12:00

Fri, 09/17/2010 - 12:00

Binge drinking is common during adolescence, a period of rapid brain development. In this study, researchers used adolescent nonhuman primates to examine the effects of long-term binge alcohol consumption on brain development. They found that an 11-month period of heavy binge alcohol consumption by nonhuman primates led to a significant and persistent reduction in neurogenesis – the birth and maturation...

Wednesday, June 10, 2015, 10:15 am EDT

Open Session of the National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. AGENDA Note: subject to change.

Thursday, September 15, 2016, 10:15 am EDT

Open Session of the National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. View the Agenda Hours subject to change.

Tuesday, May 2, 2017, 10:15 am EDT

Open Session of the National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. AGENDA Hours subject to change; a final agenda will be posted closer to the date of the event.

Thursday, February 9, 2017, 9:00 am EST

Open Session of the National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. View the Agenda . Agenda subject to change; a final agenda will be posted closer to the date of the event.

Deaths dropped by 4.2 percent community-wide over six years A criminal justice program that requires offenders convicted of alcohol-related offenses to stop drinking and submit to frequent alcohol testing with swift, certain, and modest sanctions for a violation was linked to a significant reduction in county-level mortality rates in South Dakota. These results came from a study funded by the...

April 12, 2016

In honor of Alcohol Awareness Month, NIAAA hosted a chat with the American Society of Addiction Medicine on April 7. The focus was to address the science of addiction, current evidence-based approaches for treating alcohol use disorder, and resources for health professionals. View the archived chat at https://twitter.com/NIAAAnews/status/719878054349246464 NIAAA Expert: Aaron White, PhD, Senior Advisor to the NIAAA Director Hashtag...

Event registration opens today; new teacher resources available. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) announced today that the next National Drug & Alcohol Facts Week (NDAFW) will be held Jan. 23-29, 2017, with event registration beginning immediately. NDAFW is an annual, week-long observance that brings together teens and scientific...

Changes to genetic material in the brain may help induce the anxiety that is characteristic of alcohol withdrawal, according to a new study supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The finding points to possible therapies to prevent withdrawal-related anxiety, a driving force behind alcohol use among dependent...

Researchers supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), have identified new genes that may contribute to excessive alcohol consumption. The new study, conducted with strains of animals that have either a high or low innate preference for alcohol, provides clues about the molecular mechanisms that underlie the tendency...

Vulnerability to both alcohol and nicotine abuse may be influenced by the same genetic factor, according to a recent study supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In the study, two genetically distinct kinds of rat – one an innately heavy-drinking strain bred to prefer alcohol (“P” rats)...

Unhealthy alcohol drinking patterns may go hand-in-hand with unhealthy eating habits, according to a new study by researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Examining diet quality of individuals who drink any kind of alcoholic beverage, researchers found that people who...

Scientists have identified a brain mechanism in rats that may play a central role in regulating anxiety and alcohol-drinking. The finding, by researchers supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), could provide important clues about the neurobiology of alcohol-drinking behaviors in humans. A report of the study appears...