Rhoads and School of Science Alumni Publish in American Journal of Alcohol and Drug Abuse

Dennis Rhoads, Ph.D., professor emeritus of biology, worked with seven students over a period of seven years to publish "Alcohol Withdrawal and Amphetamine Co-use in an Animal Model for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder" in the American Journal of Alcohol and Drug Abuse (Volume 50, Issue 3, 2024) this June.

Biology graduates Pooja Shah '19, Marta Telatin '19, and Nick Pillarella '21 led research teams which also included biology graduates Natalie Negroni '19 and Bruno Pillari '22 and chemistry graduates Grace Haemmerle '21 and Jessica Baals '20. The team worked with Rhoads to characterize the equivalent of an alcohol use disorder in an animal model of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Previous work in Rhoads' lab showed that regular co-use of a stimulant such as amphetamine with alcohol dramatically altered the appearance of alcohol withdrawal symptoms that would be used as part of a diagnosis of an alcohol use disorder. This suggested that regularly consuming alcohol with a stimulant might mask signs of an emerging alcohol use disorder. Because amphetamine-based stimulants are commonly prescribed to individuals with ADHD, who may go on to regularly consume alcohol, the team became interested in investigating regular alcohol use in a model system for studying ADHD.

The result was unexpected: the ADHD-like animals showed little or no symptoms of alcohol withdrawal regardless of whether amphetamine was included with alcohol. Typical behaviors triggered by abstinence following regular consumption of alcohol were absent. The study points to the need for further evaluation of alcohol withdrawal symptoms as a component in diagnosis of alcohol use disorder within the populations of individuals with ADHD.