Browsing by Author "Mick, Inge"

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    Adolescent women induce lower blood alcohol levels than men in a laboratory alcohol self-administration experiment
    (Wiley, 2016-08) Jünger, Elisabeth; Gan, Gabriela; Mick, Inge; Seipt, Christian; Markovic, Alexandra; Sommer, Christian; Plawecki, Martin H.; O'Connor, Sean; Smolka, Michael N.; Zimmermann, Ulrich S.; Psychiatry, School of Medicine
    Background Adolescence is a critical period for the development of alcohol use disorders; drinking habits are rather unstable and genetic influences, such as male sex and a positive Family History of alcoholism (FH), are often masked by environmental factors such as peer pressure. Methods We investigated how sex and FH modulate alcohol use in a sample of 18-19-year-olds from the Dresden Longitudinal Study on Alcohol use in Young Adults (D-LAYA). Adolescents reported their real-life drinking in a TimeLine Follow-Back (TLFB) interview. They subsequently completed a training and an experimental session of free-access intravenous Alcohol Self-Administration (i.v. ASA) using the computer-assisted alcohol infusion system in order to control for environmental cues as well as for biological differences in alcohol pharmacokinetics. During i.v. ASA, we assessed subjective alcohol effects at eight time points. Results Women reported significantly less real-life drinking than men and achieved significantly lower mean arterial Blood Alcohol Concentrations (aBACs) in the laboratory. At the same time, women reported greater sedation relative to men and rated negative effects as high as did men. A positive FH was associated with lower real-life drinking in men but not in women. In the laboratory, FH was not linked to i.v. ASA. Greater real-life drinking was significantly positively associated with higher mean aBACs in the laboratory, and all i.v. ASA indices were highly correlated across the two sessions. Conclusions We conclude that adolescent women chose lower aBACs because they experienced adverse alcohol effects, namely sedation and negative effects, at lower aBACs than men. A positive FH was not apparent as risk factor for drinking in our young sample. The i.v. ASA method demonstrated good external validity as well as test-retest reliability, the latter indicating that a separate training session is not required when employing the i.v. ASA paradigm.
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    Development and pilot validation of Computer-Assisted Self- Selfinfusion of Ethanol (CASE): a new method to study alcohol self- selfadministration in humans
    (Wiley, 2008-07) Zimmermann, Ulrich S.; Mick, Inge; Vitvitskiy, Victor; Plawecki, Martin H.; Mann, Karl F.; O’Connor, Sean; Psychiatry, School of Medicine
    Background: Human alcohol self-administration studies employing oral intake are subject to high variability of the resulting blood alcohol concentrations because of idiosyncrasies of gastrointestinal absorption kinetics among subjects. We sought to improve the subjects' opportunity to control their brain alcohol exposure by computer-assisted i.v. self-administration. Methods: Instead of drinking, subjects could request increments of their arterial blood alcohol concentration (aBAC) of precisely 7.5 mg% at any time they wanted by pressing a button, provided their aBAC would not exceed 100 mg%. The latency between pushing the button and reaching the new aBAC peak was preset to be 2.5 minutes on the first day and was randomly changed to 1.5 or 3.5 minutes on days 2 and 3 in a crossover design. The necessary rate and amount of alcohol infusion was calculated by the software about once every second. Nine healthy social drinkers (4 females/5 males; mean age 25.0 +/- 4.0 year) participated in 3 sessions each. Outcome measures were mean and maximum observed aBAC, and the number of alcohol requests. Results: Maximum aBAC was 76.5 +/- 26.3 mg% on average over all experiments. When grouping days 2 and 3 according to latency (1.5 vs. 3.5 minutes), maximum aBAC and the number of requests in the session were significantly higher with the faster rise and all 3 outcome measures were significantly correlated between days. No such correlations were found between the first and either of the following days. Conclusions: These data suggest that CASE is practical and safe, and results in considerable alcohol exposure that can be manipulated with parameters chosen for the incremental exposure. Following 1 practice day, test-retest stability was good, suggesting a potential for use in scientific studies.
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    Offspring of parents with an alcohol use disorder prefer higher levels of brain alcohol exposure in laboratory experiments involving computer-assisted self-infusion of ethanol (CASE)
    (SpringerLink, 2009-03) Zimmermann, Ulrich S.; Mick, Inge; Laucht, Manfred; Vitvitskiy, Victor; Plawecki, Martin H.; Mann, Karl F.; O’Connor, Sean; Psychiatry, School of Medicine
    Rationale: Acute alcohol effects may differ in social drinkers with a positive family history of alcohol use disorders (FHP) compared to FH negative (FHN) controls. Objectives: To investigate whether FHP subjects prefer higher levels of brain alcohol exposure than do FHN controls. Materials and methods: Twenty-two young healthy nondependent social drinkers participated in two identical sessions of computer-assisted self-infusion of ethanol (CASE); the first for practicing the procedures, the second to test hypotheses. All 12 FHP (four women) and ten FHN (three women) participants received a priming exposure, increasing arterial blood alcohol concentration (aBAC) to 30 mg% at 10 min and decreasing it to 15 mg% at 25 min. A 2-h self-administration period followed, during which only the subjects could increase their aBAC by pressing a button connected to a computer controlling the infusion pump. Infusion rate profiles were calculated instantaneously to increase aBAC by precisely 7.5 mg% within 2.5 min after each button press, followed by a steady descent. Subjects were instructed to produce the same alcohol effects as they would do at a weekend party. Results: The mean and maximum aBAC during the self-administration period and the number of alcohol requests (NOAR) were significantly higher in the FHP vs. FHN participants. Conclusions: This is the first laboratory experiment demonstrating higher alcohol self-administration in FHP compared to FHN subjects. A practice session increases the sensitivity of CASE experiments for detection of subtle differences in human alcohol self-administration.