RCMI Pilot Project – Sunil Sirohi
Project title: Alcohol use disorder and related health disparities: Evaluating the impact of stress and disordered eating on alcohol drinking and related pathology.
PI: Sunil Sirohi
Email: ssirohi@xula.edu
Goals and Objectives :
The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of prolonged mild unpredictable stress (MUS) and a high-calorie diet (HCD) co-exposure on alcohol drinking, emotional states, and gene expression in the brain cortico-limbic circuitry (medial prefrontal cortex and amygdala) of male and female rats. Figure (PROPOSAL) presents an oversimplified operational scheme along with the aims (bottom panel) of the present application. The central prediction is that combined MUS and HCD exposure would have a greater impact on behavioral and neurobiological signatures of alcohol drinking. The rationale for the proposed studies is that once these experiments are completed, the functional significance of emotional distress and HCD interaction on alcohol drinking will be identified.
In 2022, 29.5 million people (age 12 or older) had alcohol use disorder (AUD), a chronic relapsing disorder, which poses a substantial physical and mental health risk to millions of people each year. Alcohol drinking is also one of the most important preventable risk factors for cancer, and ~3.5% of cancer deaths in the United States could be attributed to alcohol. Notably, a considerable level of alcohol-related health disparities also exists. For example, despite low alcohol consumption, negative consequences from drinking are disproportionately higher in some ethnic minorities, and African Americans and Hispanics are more likely than the white population to report alcohol dependence symptoms.
In addition, AUD and eating disorders (EDs) frequently co-occur in the presence of other psychiatric disorders. It is also worth noting that racial differences in dietary consumption of high-fat food and sugar-sweetened beverages (Southern-style diet) have also been registered, where African Americans consume greater amounts of high-calorie palatable food. Maladaptive eating/drinking share many common features (e.g., emergence of negative emotional states), and data suggest that individuals who engage in problematic eating behavior are at higher risk for developing substance abuse, overweight/obesity, and worsening depressive symptoms, which may contribute to the maintenance and progression of these disorders. Notably, racial and ethnic variations in stress exposure also exist, where blacks, especially those with low socioeconomic status, reported a greater number of stressful life events and greater distress than the white population.
Converging research evidence indicates common neurochemical, behavioral, and physiological determinants of stress, maladaptive eating, and alcohol drinking, suggesting a complex interaction between high-calorie food, alcohol, and stress. While the isolated effects of stress and palatable diet exposure on alcohol drinking are well studied, little is known about the impact of emotional distress combined with a high-calorie sugar/fat diet on alcohol drinking and related pathology, a vicious combination that may trigger greater psychiatric and medical concerns. Understanding this relationship is critically important as intensified negative emotional states along with problematic eating behavior may contribute to AUD-related health disparities and the progression of AUD comorbidity. There is a pressing need to better understand the pathogenesis of psychiatric illness due to these co-morbid disorders, which could potentially improve the clinical assessment and treatment for these debilitating disorders. Overall, this project takes an innovative approach to enhance our understanding of the critical components responsible for alcohol-related health disparities by evaluating the interaction between emotional stress and problematic food consumption on alcohol drinking and the underlying mechanisms. In addition, data generated from these studies will likely lead to the identification of novel therapeutic targets and will provide the basis for PI’s extramural research proposal to evaluate the functional significance of those changes in alcohol use disorder.