Reporter Volume 25, No.15 February 3, 1994

By LOIS BAKER
News Bureau Staff
The UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and the
Buffalo-based Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) have received a
joint $8-million grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse
and Alcoholism (NIAAA) to establish the nation's first Center for the
Clinical and Medical Epidemiology of Alcohol.
	Howard T. Blane, RIA director, will direct the new center and
Marcia Russell, RIA senior research scientist, will be scientific
director. Maurizio Trevisan, chair of the UB Department of Social and
Preventive Medicine, will direct research conducted at UB.
 	The grant will fund three major studies that will run
concurrently over the next five years.
	Trevisan will direct a study examining the relationship
between alcohol consumption patterns and coronary heart disease. Jo
Freudenheim, UB associate professor of social and preventive medicine,
will lead a study of alcohol's role in lung cancer. At RIA, Russell
and Arthur W.K. Chan will investigate factors that influence
alcoholics to enter treatment programs.
	In addition, the center will develop a computer-based
geographic information system on alcohol consumption under project
director William F. Wieczorek of the RIA; establish a statistical
analysis and measurements core directed by James Marshall, UB
professor of social and preventive medicine; set up a blood-specimen
bank to support future research, a project to be directed by Trevisan,
and host a national conference on alcohol epidemiology to be held in
Buffalo in 1998.
	The grant will create approximately 30 jobs. 
	"This is the first NIAAA Alcohol Research Center dedicated to
studying the clinical and medical epidemiology of alcohol," said
Blane. "The new center adds an important, substantive direction to
alcohol research in this country. These studies will significantly
expand our knowledge of the natural history of alcoholism and the
relationship between alcohol use and health disorders.
	"Most of what we know about alcoholism is based on studies of
alcoholics in treatment, but it has been estimated that 75 to 90
percent of the alcoholic population never enters an alcohol-treatment
program," he said. "Thus, there is a strong need for population-based
studies like the ones we will conduct."
	Trevisan said the grant offers a unique opportunity for
alcohol researchers and clinical epidemiologists to work together--a
situation that has existed rarely in the past--and to conduct valuable
research into alcohol's relationship to chronic disease.
	"The study concentrating on coronary heart disease will look
in detail at drinking patterns, not just the amount, but the way
people consume alcohol as possible risk factors," he said. "We will
also look at the interaction between alcohol and other nutritional
factors."
 	The UB study on alcohol and lung cancer will be the first to
control for possible confounders, such as nutritional status and
passive smoking. Passive smoking is a particularly important factor to
consider, he stated, because a great deal of alcohol is consumed in
smoky bars.
	The biological-specimen bank will allow future researchers to
explore the role of genetic markers and individual susceptibility, and
assess the interaction between alcohol consumption and these markers.
	One of the center's goals is to develop a better understanding
of why some alcoholics seek treatment while others do not, and why
some alcoholics appear to recover without treatment, Russell said.
"This knowledge is critical to improving current efforts to intervene
with alcohol abusers."
	RIA is a research institute affiliated with the New York State
Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services.
	Additional RIA scientists involved in the new center are
Gerard J. Connors, Kenneth E. Leonard and Michael R. Frone.
	Additional UB scientists involved are Manavela M. Desu,
Jeffrey S. Schwartz, Donald Armstrong, Elisa V. Bandera, Terry
Pechacek, John E. Vena, Lucy Campbell and Paula Muti.