Nearly 15 million Americans 12 years of age and older were dependent on or abused alcohol in 2010.1 The high prevalence of problem alcohol use worldwide has been estimated to cause 2.5 million deaths each year,2 not to mention the exorbitant costs associated with excess morbidity3 and loss of productivity.4 The chronic and relapsing nature of alcoholism, just like that of every other substance use disorder, is one of the major obstacles to its successful treatment. This is why the search for predictive biomarkers to help clinicians select and monitor a therapeutic course of action and to help researchers evaluate new therapeutic interventions is so urgent.
It is well established that the risk for alcohol relapse is tied to static (eg, severity index, marital status, psychiatric symptoms, and genetics) and dynamic (eg, craving and stress) factors. The latter offer particularly useful metrics whose magnitudes correlate quite closely with different disease trajectories5 and can consistently predict alcohol relapse risk.6- 7 Thus, a better understanding of a patient's response to stress and/or alcohol cues is bound to contribute to the design of more personalized and, therefore, effective treatment strategies. The findings reported by Seo et al8 in the current issue of JAMA Psychiatry represent an important step forward for they manage to map the relationship between relapse risk and specific neural substrates, advancing the feasibility of a brain biomarker for predicting relapse into alcohol drinking. > > > > Read More
