UIC to study how adolescent binge drinking impacts adult behavior

The University of Illinois Chicago has received $4.5 million in continuation funding from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to support the UIC site of the national Neurobiology of Adolescent Drinking in Adulthood, or NADIA, consortium.

The UIC site is led by Subhash Pandey, professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Alcohol Research in Epigenetics at UIC. He also will serve as a scientific director of the overall NADIA consortium.

The mission of the consortium is to study how adolescent binge drinking affects genes, brain circuitry, and behaviors through epigenetics — chemical changes to DNA, RNA or proteins that alter the expression of genes without directly modifying them. This funding, which is a renewal of funding from the NIAAA first awarded in 2010, will support the consortium for five years.

“This new funding will allow us to continue our investigations into how binge drinking in adolescence causes epigenetic changes and impacts physical and mental health, including addiction, later in life,” Pandey said. Research goals for the consortium include identifying neurobiological changes that result from early binge drinking and investigating the role of abnormal epigenetic processes in the amygdala, which increases the risk for adult psychopathology such as anxiety as well as alcohol use disorders.