Two Syracuse University professors are looking into a correlation between chronic pain and alcohol consumption using humans as participants in the study.

SU psychology professors and clinical psychologists Joseph Ditre and Stephen Maisto recently received a five year, $2.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund the study. The study will look at whether alcohol consumption increases as pain increases, and whether people are more likely to consume alcohol when in pain. 

“The NIH had some interest in soliciting research ideas on the relationship between alcohol use and pain — and we responded to that announcement,” Maisto said. “We put our unique experience together.”

Unlike other studies, this particular study includes human participants. The study builds off of similar research that has only been done in animal models.

Maisto said although the experiment may be the first of its nature and magnitude, the participants will be fully safe. 

“We have ways to protect our participants against any risks that might occur,” Maisto said. “We wouldn’t be allowed to do the study if a person’s health were at risk.”

The experimental research component will involve 280 subjects, marking the first study of its scale. Very few participants, if any, will come from SU because they are required to be over 21 to drink alcohol. Instead, the participants will be moderate to heavy drinkers drawn from the local area, Maisto said.

So, in turn, the study may not have a large impact on college students. Maisto said college students sometimes relieve acute, or short term, pain with drugs or alcohol, although Ditre said it isn’t impossible for young people to deal with chronic pain.

Maisto and Ditre both agreed that chronic pain is more prevalent in adults over 30 years of age, and that pain increases when people get older.

“Chronic pain conditions are more typical in older populations,” Ditre said, “but the extent to which pain may make one want to drink could be the same regardless of age.”

The experiment involves two parts: First, administrators give alcohol to the subjects and then test their pain or response. Those same participants will come back on a separate date, when pain will be induced and the staff will measure how much alcohol it tempts them to drink in order to relieve the pain. 

With the lab studies, the team hopes to find out how much pain may make someone want to drink, how much people with chronic pain may drink when given the opportunity and how that drinking will reduce pain in the short term.

In many cases, Maisto said, chronic pain is difficult to define. For this study, Maisto and his staff have established chronic pain to be pain that lasts for at least three months.

“(Chronic pain) is considered a public health problem,” he said. “People with chronic pain sometimes try to self medicate with alcohol or other drugs. It has been talked about a lot the last couple years.”

Maisto has been doing research and investigating treatments for alcohol addiction for 40 years since he earned his Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1975. Although the two professors work in similar areas of research, Maisto said it is a pleasure to work with a younger mind in Ditre, who has a comparably strong background in the field of tobacco smoking and pain.

The rest of the five-person team is made up of experimental psychologist Stephen Glatt from Upstate Medical University, a clinical psychologist from University of Houston and a physician who will monitor safety during the experiments.

The research team is finishing up the preliminary work — setting up the labs, obtaining subjects and collecting participants’ health records. The project is expected to start in the next couple of months, Maisto said.

Published on August 29, 2016 at 8:14 pm

Contact Kenneth: kmintz@syr.edu