Addiction Flashcards
What neurotransmitter systems plays a shared role in the binge/intoxication stage for all drugs of abuse?
Dopamine
What behavioral phenomena is thought to be due to elevated brain reward thresholds during acute drug abstinence?
Increased negative motivational/affective state during acute abstinence
What brain area or system is most directly implicated in emotional dysregulation during the withdrawal/negative affect stage of addictive behavior?
Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis
What brain area or system is most directly involved in executive control over incentive salience/preoccupation?
Prefrontal cortex, through projections to ventral tegmental area
What is the correct sequence of physiological/molecular events leading to the synaptic plasticity that underlies addiction?
Reduction in inhibitory G-protein levels -> increased cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) levels -> increased protein kinase A (PKA) activity -> cAMP
response element binding protein (CREB) regulation of gene expression -> synaptic plasticity
What statement best describes the genetic influences on the development of substance use disorders?
Substance use disorders are inherited via risk alleles that require a gene-by-environment interaction
From the evidence to date, what statement about the heritability of alcohol and substance use disorders is most accurate?
Twin studies have estimated heritability of alcohol dependence, ranging from 50% to 60%.
What statement about genetic susceptibility for developing alcohol dependence is most accurate?
Increased risk for alcohol dependence has been mapped to an alcohol dehydrogenase gene cluster on chromosome 4q (ADH4).
Which of the following statements best describes the role of the DRD2 locus in susceptibility to drug or alcohol dependence?
For nicotine dependence risk, evidence of association is stronger for single nucleotide polymorphisms at loci TTC12 and ANKK1, which are located near the DRD2 locus on chromosome 11
Genomewide association studies have mapped susceptibility for nicotine dependence to a cluster of nicotinic receptor genes where?
chromosome 15
What is the most widely used illicit drug or drug class internationally?
Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug internationally; it is used by an estimated 119–221 million people worldwide (2.6%–5.0% of the population)
Globally, epidemiological surveys consistently show that men are much more likely than women to have a substance use disorder. In the United States, use of which substance is associated with being a white female?
Stimulant use is associated with being young, female, and white or Hispanic, with increased use in western and southwestern states of the United States
What symptom has been removed from DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association 2013) because it was of such high severity that it had little clinical utility?
substance-related legal problems
The National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (Lopez-Quintero et al. 2011) indicated that transitions from alcohol use to dependence were associated with what factors?
young, black, male, with comorbid disorders and family history
Epidemiological surveys are informative about who becomes addicted to substances. In developed countries, having an alcohol use disorder is associated with what?
Being male, young, unmarried, and of low socioeconomic status
Culturally sensitive care can be delivered through several models, and each model has its own challenges. Which model runs the risk of marginalization?
separate services
By the early 1920s, most of the opioid detoxification clinics were closed. What was an important factor in this change?
The clinics were deemed a failure because the
patients did not become abstinent
Many well-known substance abuse treatment programs have historically expressed nonacceptance of medications as treatment options to prevent relapse. What best accounts for this decision?
Medication use conflicts with their treatment
philosophy
Why is detoxification the most common form of treatment for substance use disorders?
Detoxification is covered by most insurance programs,
even state Medicaid programs
What best describes the position taken by the Central Council of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) regarding individuals who are taking physician prescribed treatment medications for substance dependence?
Use of physician-prescribed treatment medications is permitted
Why have some clinicians denied that naltrexone is effective in patients with alcohol use disorder?
Naltrexone does not reliably produce longterm
abstinence from alcohol; rather, it reliably produces a reduction in heavy drinking.
What best accounts for why there has been little motivation for pharmaceutical companies to pursue medications to treat substance use disorders?
Medications already available are used so
little
Name 4 medical conditions associated with alcohol use disorder.
cerebellar degeneration, cardiomyopathy, pancreatitis, aspiration pneumonia
What is the most useful brief screening for alcoholism?
AUDIT-C: How often did you have a drink containing alcohol in the past year? How many drinks containing alcohol did you have on a typical day when you were drinking in the past year? How often did you have six or more drinks on one occasion in the past year?
What is a proven effect of brief intervention (BI) for patients with alcohol use?
Reduction in risky drinking by 10% at 1 year
Define “risky” drinking.
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (2007) defines “risky” amounts as more than 14 drinks per week on average or more than 4 drinks in a day for men less than 65 years of age, and more than 7 drinks per week or three in a day for women and for men age 65 or older. A standard drink has 12–14 grams of ethanol, which is the content found in 12 ounces of regular-strength beer, 5 ounces of nonfortified wine, and 1.5 ounces of 80-proof liquor.
What brain region is neural activity both correlated with cue-induced alcohol craving and reduced by successful treatments?
Ventral striatum/nucleus accumbens
What acute effect of alcohol is a phenotypic marker of alcoholism risk?
Low sedative-ataxic effects
What effect is linked to allelic variation of the OPRM1 gene?
Level of alcohol-induced dopamine release within the ventral striatum/nucleus accumbens
What physiological process is thought to be most directly involved in the acute withdrawal syndrome that occurs upon cessation of heavy drinking?
Rebound hyperactivity of glutamatergic neurotransmission
The binding of corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) to what brain region leads to increased behavioral reactivity to stress after cessation of heavy alcohol use?
Amygdala complex
What laboratory assay would be best to utilize during alcohol treatment if your goal is to detect heavy alcohol use and monitor drinking status?
Carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT)
A 65-year-old patient with a history or delirium tremens is on your service for management of alcohol withdrawal. If the patient’s withdrawal is left untreated, when might you expect to see symptoms of delirium tremens emerge?
2–4 days from last drink of alcohol
What is delirium tremens?
fluctuating disturbance of consciousness, agitation and tremulousness, autonomic instability, hyperpyrexia, persistent visual and auditory hallucinations, and disorientation
To prevent precipitation of Wernicke’s encephalopathy in a patient with alcohol use disorder, thiamine should be administered before what?
glucose
A 33-year-old woman with a decade-long history of cocaine use tearfully states that she wants nothing more than to reconcile with her ex-husband, have more visits with her children, and get a job. However, she never spends much time on these goals before she prostitutes herself in order to use again. She knows she is making bad decisions, but when faced with a choice between feeling good quickly from cocaine versus possibly feeling good later upon achieving a goal, she always chooses the high. What is the term for this decision-making tendency related to chronic stimulant use?
Delayed discounting is the tendency to choose immediate rewards over larger, delayed rewards, associated with
decreased recruitment of dorsal brain circuitry including dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex.
Methamphetamine and cocaine have similar properties, but methamphetamine is more neurotoxic because of which feature that cocaine lacks?
Promotion of dopamine release
N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) antagonists prevent both dopaminergic and serotonergic neurotoxicity, suggesting these medications could decrease methamphetamine toxicity by interference with which NMDA receptor binding neurotransmitter?
Glutamate
Which GABA–modulating medication was found to decrease relapse in cocaine users?
Topiramate, which enhances GABA and blocks alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA) glutamate receptors, decreased the likelihood of relapse to cocaine use.
What would the expected presentation be for a longtime methamphetamine user who abruptly discontinues use?
Depression
What approach to the treatment of cocaine addiction,
when combined with contingency management, has been shown to reduce cocaine use more effectively than either treatment alone or placebo?
Bupropion
What medication targeting neuroadaptations to chronic cocaine use, when combined with amphetamine salts, has been shown to reduce cocaine use compared with placebo?
Topiramate
When compared with cocaine, methamphetamine (MA) exhibits what important difference in neuronal effects?
MA induces intracellular dopamine-containing vesicles to dock with the cell membrane and leak dopamine into the synaptic cleft.
The police bring a 27-year-old man with a history of anxiety and cannabis dependence to the emergency room with new-onset paranoid delusions and acute agitation. A friend provides history that the patient was smoking methamphetamine (MA) for the prior 2 days. To manage the patient’s toxicity, including the agitation, which of the following would be the most appropriate intervention?
Administer haloperidol combined with lorazepam in repeated doses over a 12-hour observation period
What is a problem uniquely experienced by adult MA-dependent women associated with their methamphetamine (MA) use?
Over 70% of adult MA-dependent women report histories of physical and sexual abuse and are more likely than men to present for treatment with greater psychological distress.
The Matrix Model, a blended treatment approach that has shown efficacy for treatment of methamphetamine (MA) use disorders, incorporates what components?
Individual and group cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), family education, motivational interviewing, and 12-step program participation.
There are no medications that are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of methamphetamine (MA) addiction. What drugs have only positive results from clinical trials in human beings demonstrating reduced stimulant use/prevention of relapse to MA or amphetamine-type stimulants (ATSs)?
Mirtazapine, naltrexone, and bupropion