# A novel animal model to study the association between alcohol abuse during late adolescence with common conditions observed in combat Veterans

> **NIH VA I01** · BALTIMORE VA MEDICAL CENTER · 2024 · —

## Abstract

The maturation of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is a hallmark of the transition between adolescence to adulthood.
Because the PFC matures around 25 years of age, it is safe to say that most frontline soldiers are still during
adolescence. The Center of Disease Control and Prevention reports that service members have the highest
alcohol use of all queried professions. Moreover, alcohol use increases following combat deployment.
Therefore, most service members are exposed to large amounts of alcohol during a period that the PFC is still
immature. The PFC acts through top-down control to regulate the activity of many subcortical regions; and
doing so regulates and integrates emotional and stress responses, as well as motivation and reward seeking.
Taking the aforementioned facts together we hypothesize that “consumption of constant and high levels of
alcohol by service members, affects PFC development and makes these subjects more prone to develop
conditions that afflict our Veterans such as: altered stress response, addiction, depression, mood swings and
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Testing this hypothesis and its underlying mechanisms in an
appropriate animal model would make a great contribution to the field.
Unfortunately, current animal models have limitations in studying consequences of chronic alcohol use
restricted to late adolescence. For instance, rodents have a very short-late adolescence, making it difficult to
mimic a chronic and heavy alcohol consumption. In non-human primates, “late adolescence” is too long
making experiments very time consuming and costly. In this 3-year BLRD application, we propose to develop a
novel animal model that can mimic prolonged heavy alcohol consumption restricted to late adolescence.
Developing this model would pave the way to test how alcohol exposure during late adolescence can alter
dopaminergic neurotransmission and stress responses - making the prefrontal cortex vulnerable to “second
hits” such as high stress and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). This information could help us understand why
Veterans are much vulnerable to mental health disorders and potentially devise therapeutic interventions.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10874492
- **Project number:** 5I01BX005678-03
- **Recipient organization:** BALTIMORE VA MEDICAL CENTER
- **Principal Investigator:** Alexandre Esteves Medina
- **Activity code:** I01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** VA
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** —
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2022-04-01 → 2026-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10874492

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10874492, A novel animal model to study the association between alcohol abuse during late adolescence with common conditions observed in combat Veterans (5I01BX005678-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10874492. Licensed CC0.

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