Assessment of exposure to drug use and psychosocial stress is complicated by the fact that each is often transient and difficult to recall accurately. Assessment of their causal connections with one another, and of their genetic and environmental determinants, is complicated by the complexity of the causal connections and by the elusive nature of what constitutes the environment. In this study, we are assessing drug use and psychosocial stress in near-real time through Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA), in which participants use handheld electronic diaries to record events as they occur and to report recent or ongoing events in response to randomly timed prompts throughout the day. We are also maintaining real-time records of where the reported events occurred by having participants carry Global Positioning System (GPS) devices to track their whereabouts with a spatial resolution of several meters. Broadening the definition of environmental factors, we are evaluating neighborhood-level exposures to drugs and stress measured in terms of specially developed indices, the Drug Environment Index (DEI) and the Neighborhood Psychosocial Hazards index (NPH), each based on objective statistical data available from public sources and independent of self-report, plus the NifETy index, based on objective environmental ratings by trained observers. For comparison, drug exposure will also be assessed through retrospective interviews and from biological specimens (sweat), and stress will be assessed through physiological measures (heart rate and allostatic load). The project represents a collaboration between the NIDA IRP (where we have are already published EMA data from polydrug-dependent outpatients) and Johns Hopkins ALIVE Study investigators (following a well-characterized community cohort of drug abusers, most of whom are not in treatment). After developmental work at NIDA linked to field trials in ALIVE, the result is expected to be a set of field-deployable, state-of-the-art tools indispensable to future studies of gene-environment interactions affecting drug use and stress. In the past year, we successfully ran a pilot study in which we collected both EMA and location data. We have just initiated a larger trial incorporating additional stress measures.

Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
Budget End
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
2009
Total Cost
$724,430
Indirect Cost
Name
National Institute on Drug Abuse
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
State
Country
Zip Code
Moran, Landhing M; Kowalczyk, William J; Phillips, Karran A et al. (2018) Sex differences in daily life stress and craving in opioid-dependent patients. Am J Drug Alcohol Abuse 44:512-523
Preston, Kenzie L; Kowalczyk, William J; Phillips, Karran A et al. (2018) Exacerbated Craving in the Presence of Stress and Drug Cues in Drug-Dependent Patients. Neuropsychopharmacology 43:859-867
Bertz, Jeremiah W; Epstein, David H; Preston, Kenzie L (2018) Combining ecological momentary assessment with objective, ambulatory measures of behavior and physiology in substance-use research. Addict Behav 83:5-17
Kowalczyk, William J; Moran, Landhing M; Bertz, Jeremiah W et al. (2018) Using ecological momentary assessment to examine the relationship between craving and affect with opioid use in a clinical trial of clonidine as an adjunct medication to buprenorphine treatment. Am J Drug Alcohol Abuse 44:502-511
Goldenholz, Daniel M; Goldenholz, Shira R; Krishnamurthy, Kaarkuzhali B et al. (2018) Using mobile location data in biomedical research while preserving privacy. J Am Med Inform Assoc :
Preston, Kenzie L; Kowalczyk, William J; Phillips, Karran A et al. (2018) Before and after: craving, mood, and background stress in the hours surrounding drug use and stressful events in patients with opioid-use disorder. Psychopharmacology (Berl) 235:2713-2723
Preston, Kenzie L; Kowalczyk, William J; Phillips, Karran A et al. (2017) Context and craving during stressful events in the daily lives of drug-dependent patients. Psychopharmacology (Berl) 234:2631-2642
Moran, Landhing M; Phillips, Karran A; Kowalczyk, William J et al. (2017) Aripiprazole for cocaine abstinence: a randomized-controlled trial with ecological momentary assessment. Behav Pharmacol 28:63-73
Carmona-Rivera, Carmelo; Purmalek, Monica M; Moore, Erica et al. (2017) A role for muscarinic receptors in neutrophil extracellular trap formation and levamisole-induced autoimmunity. JCI Insight 2:e89780
Kowalczyk, William J; Bertz, Jeremiah W; Moran, Landhing M et al. (2017) Clonidine Increases the Likelihood That Abstinence Can Withstand Unstructured Time in Buprenorphine-maintained Outpatients. J Addict Med 11:454-460

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