# Genetic, Social, and Developmental Epidemiology of Drug Use Disorders

> **NIH NIH R01** · VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY · 2022 · $590,270

## Abstract

Program Director/Principal Investigator: Kendler, Kenneth S
This second competitive renewal seeks to continue our innovative and productive research program which
seeks to understand the etiology of drug use disorders (DUD) utilizing data available on the entire population of
Sweden of unparalleled completeness and depth. We have eight specific aims: i) to use a newly developed
genetic risk score for DUD for the entire Swedish population to explore boundaries of the DUD phenotype,
model gene x environment interactions and clarify origins of DUD-related comorbidities; ii) to understand the
impact of social roles/relationships (e.g., marriage, divorce, parenthood) on risk and resilience for DUD; iii) to
explore the etiology of opiate use disorder (OUD) by comparing the social, familial and genetic risk factors
OUD and non-opiate DUD, by clarifying the etiologic role of opiate prescriptions in OUD development and to
identify clinically meaningful subtypes of OUD, especially an iatrogenic form; iv) to investigate the impact of
institutional settings on subsequent DUD, focusing on military service and incarceration; v) to evaluate the
impact of synthetically constructed populations compared to actual Swedish populations in the evaluation of
DUD and OUD utilizing FRED (A Framework for Reconstructing Epidemiological Dynamics) developed by our
collaborators at the Public Health Dynamics Laboratory (PHDL) at University of Pittsburgh; vi) to improve our
contagion models for the transmission of DUD by taking advantage of new data available in Swedish registries
on high school attendance, college attendance and workplace, improved Geographic Information Systems and
FRED; vii) to explore the association between stressful and traumatic events including COVID-19 exposure
severity and stress-related disorders (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD]) with DUD onset and
recurrence and examine moderators of impact of both exposures and stress-related disorders on DUD and viii)
using a calibrated, detailed version of the Swedish population in FRED, to evaluate the predicted impact of a
range of mitigation strategies, based on the relationships defined by our earlier work and new findings from the
above aims. We will, for many of these aims, attempt to clarify the causal nature of the observed associations
using statistical and natural experimental methods. We will use comprehensive data from multiple nationwide
data sources in Sweden on 11.8 million men and women to accomplish these goals. Applying the deep
expertise of our research groups at Virginia Commonwealth, PHDL and Lund University in drug abuse
research, social and genetic epidemiology, causal inference and epidemiological model development to a
uniquely powerful sample, we expect this study to have important implications for DUD research, prevention
and policy.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10369697
- **Project number:** 5R01DA030005-12
- **Recipient organization:** VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** KENNETH SEEDMAN KENDLER
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $590,270
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2010-03-15 → 2025-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10369697

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10369697, Genetic, Social, and Developmental Epidemiology of Drug Use Disorders (5R01DA030005-12). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10369697. Licensed CC0.

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