NCT06584448

Drinking, Acetate, and Stress

Role of Acetate in Heavy Drinking

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 50 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Yale University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 55 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The purpose of this study is to learn how drinking alcohol affects how people experience stress and how that is affected by the body's chemistry. Specifically, the investigators will be studying relationships of drinking and a stress hormone called cortisol. The investigators believe that results will lead us to find more effective ways to help people stop or reduce drinking when participants are drinking at harmful levels.

Detailed description

Brain acetate consumption will be measured with a novel method called Deuterium Metabolic Imaging (DMI), in which sodium acetate that has been labeled with deuterium, a non-radioactive isotope of hydrogen, is administered intravenously over two hours, while Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) is used to map the appearance of the deuterium in glutamate and glutamine regionally through the brain. That combination of glutamate and glutamine, called Glx, serves as a tag to measure the brain's rate of acetate consumption. That is, the more deuterium appears in Glx, the more acetate that part of the brain consumes. In the same people, investigators will perform structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) for co-registration with the MRI and assess regional brain volumes. Investigators will also obtain measures of drinking and stress, and will measure participants serum cortisol levels and rates of cortisol turnover. Each set of measures will be compared across groups, and the measurements of acetate uptake will be compared with all other measures for associations.

Conditions

• Alcohol Use Disorder
• Alcohol Use, Unspecified
• Heavy Drinker
• Alcohol Use Disorder, Moderate, in Sustained Remission

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Deuterium Metabolic Imaging with deuterated acetate tracer	Deuterium Metabolic Imaging (DMI) is a method by which Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) is used to map the appearance of deuterium from a tracer source (e.g., deuterated acetate) in products of metabolism. In this case we will map the combination of glutamate and glutamine, called Glx, to serve as a tag to measure the brain's rate of acetate consumption. That is, the more deuterium appears in Glx, the more acetate that part of the brain consumes.

Timeline

• Start date: 2024-11-06
• Primary completion: 2029-01-01
• Completion: 2030-01-01
• First posted: 2024-09-04
• Last updated: 2025-07-28

Locations

2 sites across 1 country: United States