Kathleen Grant
Alcohol abuse and alcoholism exact a tremendous toll on our society. In economic terms, over $170 billion dollars is lost annually to the effects of excessive drinking. In terms of emotional and personal costs, over half of all domestic violence involves alcohol, and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) is one of the leading causes of birth defects and developmental disability in the United States. It is the largest single cause of mental retardation in the western hemisphere. Over 8 million people have signs of alcohol abuse or alcoholism, and on any given day 700,000 people are in treatment for alcohol abuse and alcoholism. Finally, it is estimated that nearly 40% of all hospital admissions and over 60% of emergency room visits are co-morbid with alcohol use.
Research in the Grant laboratory uses two fundamental paradigms in behavioral pharmacology to understand the risk for and consequences of heavy ethanol consumption. The first procedure is drug discrimination, in which the in vivo pharmacological basis for ethanol's subjective effects is characterized. In these studies the neurotransmitter systems that mediate the subjective feelings of intoxication in mice, rats and monkeys are identified. Once identified, the lab determines if the intoxicating effects of ethanol are enhanced or antagonized by pharmacological pretreatment, genetic background, or organismal state (for example, endocrine status).
The second procedure is self-administration. In these studies, the addictive basis of ethanol is investigated in populations of monkeys to determine the influence of genetic composition, sex, age, and stress on the risk for heavy drinking. The consequences of heavy ethanol consumption are investigated with changes in functional genomics and proteomics, in vivo imaging with MRI/MRS, and endocrinological status.
BIOGRAPHY
Kathleen A. Grant is a Professor in the Department of Behavioral Neurosciences at OHSU and a senior scientist in the Division of Neuroscience at the ONPRC. She earned her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Washington in 1984. This was followed by a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago. In 1987 she took an appointment as Staff Fellow at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, becoming a Senior Staff Fellow in 1990. In 1991 she joined the faculty at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, where she remained until her appointment to the Center and OHSU in 2005.
KEY PUBLICATIONS
Grant KA, Helms CM, Rogers LS, and Purdy RH. (2008) Neuroactive steroid stereospecificity of ethanol-like discriminative stimulus effects in monkeys. J Pharmacol Exp Ther. 326(1):354-61. Epub 2008 Apr 24 PMID: 18436788.
Helms C, Rogers L, Waters CA, and Grant KA. (2008) Zolpidem generalization and antagonism in male and female cynomolgus monkeys trained to discriminate 1.0 or 2.0 g/kg ethanol. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 32(7):1197-206 PMID: 18482161.
Helms CM, Rogers LS, and Grant KA. (2008) Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid in male and female cynomolgus monkeys trained to discriminate 1.0 or 2.0 g/kg ethanol. Behav Pharmacol. 19(4):317-324. PMID: 18622179.
Grant KA, Leng X, Green HL, Szeliga KT, Rogers LS, and Gonzales SW. (2008) Drinking typography established by scheduled induction predicts chronic heavy drinking in a monkey model of ethanol self-administration. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 32(10):1824-38. Epub 2008 Aug 12. PMID:18702645.
Grant KA, Stafford, J. Thiede A, Kiley C, Odagiri M, and Ferguson B. (2008) Who's at risk? Population characterization of alcohol self-administration in nonhuman primates helps identify pathways to dependence. Alcohol Reserach and Health 31:(4).
Daunais JB, Kraft RA, Davenport AT, Burnett EJ, Maxey VM, Szeliga KT, Flory GS, Hemby SE, Kroenke CD, Grant KA, and Friedman DP. MRI-guided dissection of the nonhuman primate brain: a case study. Methods, in press. PMID: 19364532.
