# Leveraging Transdermal Alcohol Monitoring to Reduce Drinking among DWI Defendants

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS HLTH SCIENCE CENTER · 2020 · $250,773

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
 In the funded parent grant (R01-AA014988-13), we are examining the effects of an 8-week contingency
management procedure using transdermal alcohol monitoring to reduce drinking among 440 individuals
arrested for driving while intoxicated (DWI). The current application is a timely and cost-effective competitive
revision proposing to add the measurement of an alcohol-use biomarker, phosphatidylethanol (PEth). The
goals of this project are to extend our previous work by determining the extent to which PEth can be used to:
(a) confirm abstinence, (b) characterize alcohol consumption levels, and (c) enhance the parent grant’s ability
to objectively characterize drinking levels during post-intervention follow-up. There is a need for alcohol
biomarkers that can objectively identify alcohol use (or confirm abstinence) and characterize individuals’
patterns of drinking. PEth, measured in whole blood, has unique characteristics that make it a sensitive
biomarker for alcohol use. Our recent pharmacokinetic study showed that PEth 16:0/18:1 (a homologue of
PEth) can be used to detect as little as 1 to 2 standard alcohol drinks, supporting the notion that it may be
useful in confirming alcohol abstinence (Javors et al., 2016). Furthermore, Ulwelling and Smith (2018)
proposed that cut-off values of PEth 16:0/18:1 may be clinically useful in identifying alcohol-use drinking levels,
including: "none/light" (< 20 ng/ml), "moderate" (20–199 ng/ml), and "heavy" (> 200 ng/ml). However, because
these values were derived from a literature review, they require further validation. Our recent work also
demonstrated that PEth 16:0/18:1 has a relatively long window of detection (half-life = 7.8 days) and can be
detected up to 28 days after the last drink. These data provide indirect support for the idea that PEth 16:0/18:1
could be used as a marker for characterization of long-term drinking levels. In contrast, we have shown that
PEth 16:0/20:4 has a much shorter half-life of 2.1 days, which may be more advantageous for characterizing
recent drinking. The parent grant is monitoring alcohol consumption via transdermal alcohol monitoring during
a contingency management intervention among individuals arrested for DWI. It includes post-intervention
visits that rely on self-reported drinking. We propose to now include measurement of PEth 16:0/18:1 and
16:0/20:4 to address the gaps discussed above and characterize levels of drinking during the post-intervention
period. We will collect blood samples weekly during the 8-week intervention phase of the study and during the
post-intervention visits (3, 6, 9, and 12 months). Our revison primary aims are: to determine the accuracy of
PEth 16:0/18:1 for detecting and identifying patterns of alcohol consumption (verified by transdermal alcohol
monitoring); to develop and validate an algorithm for PEth 16:0/20:4 (shorter half-life) to detect and identify
patterns of consumption (verified by transdermal alcohol mon...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9850045
- **Project number:** 3R01AA014988-15S1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS HLTH SCIENCE CENTER
- **Principal Investigator:** Donald M Dougherty
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $250,773
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2005-04-01 → 2022-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9850045

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9850045, Leveraging Transdermal Alcohol Monitoring to Reduce Drinking among DWI Defendants (3R01AA014988-15S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9850045. Licensed CC0.

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