# The Etiology of Risk: Alcohol Use Disorder and Suicidal Behavior

> **NIH NIH R01** · VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $552,043

## Abstract

Project Summary
The current renewal proposal seeks to expand upon our successful initial award to clarify the mechanisms
underlying observed associations between alcohol use disorder (AUD) and suicidal behaviors (SB), including
non-fatal suicide attempts and suicide death. The research team has an extensive history of productive
collaborations, including in the realm of psychiatric and substance use disorder research. We have access to
longitudinal Swedish national registries including medical, criminal, census, family, and socioeconomic data for
nearly 11 million individuals; these resources will be linked to create detailed datasets encompassing a wide
range of risk factors at individual, familial, and environmental levels. We will utilize these resources to extend
our prior research through the pursuit of four specific aims. In the first aim we will evaluate how AUD and post-
traumatic stress disorder, or trauma exposure, relate via mediating or moderating pathways to risk of SB. We
will apply well-established methods, including those that facilitate causal inference. Second, we will directly
compare and contrast pathways to SB via AUD versus major depression (MD). AUD and MD constitute two
primary correlates/risk factors for SB, but much remains unknown about distinctions and commonalities between
these associations. The current proposal will focus primarily on the role of social dysfunction, with the goal of
identifying factors that may improve risk assessment. Third, we will consider how AUD relates to two common
medical conditions, cardiovascular disease and dementia, with respect to SB risk. Both conditions are
themselves associated with increased SB risk but whether they mediate and/or exacerbate the impact of AUD
is not known. Finally, we will leverage our expertise in genetic epidemiology by pursuing analyses that will clarify
how aggregate genetic liability to AUD or SB, versus AUD and SB, is differentially related to psychopathology
and other correlates of risk. Critically, Sweden and the US have comparable rates of suicidal behavior and share
many characteristics, including an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse population; however, the US lacks
registry resources comparable to those available in Sweden. We expect that the statistical power of these
registries, in conjunction with the research team’s extensive expertise in psychiatric and substance abuse
research, social and genetic epidemiology, and causal modeling, will yield substantive findings on the
relationship between AUD and SB, with important implications for improving our efforts at SB prevention and
intervention.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10735022
- **Project number:** 2R01AA027522-05
- **Recipient organization:** VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Alexis C Edwards
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $552,043
- **Award type:** 2
- **Project period:** 2019-05-20 → 2029-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10735022

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10735022, The Etiology of Risk: Alcohol Use Disorder and Suicidal Behavior (2R01AA027522-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-11 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10735022. Licensed CC0.

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