30-to-90 Day Challenge: Effects of Alcohol Cessation on Health Outcomes

Overview

The objective for this project is to determine whether how certain behavioral and health functions change in persons with heavy drinking when they stop (or reduce) drinking for 30 days, and whether changes continue for up to 90 days. The study will also identify barriers and facilitators related to drinking reduction. The project will focus on clinical comorbidities including HIV disease control, cognitive and brain function, liver abnormalities, and chronic inflammation. The study teams propose to enroll 140 HIV+ and 40 HIV- adults with heavy drinking, and then use Contingency Management (CM) with financial incentives to encourage participants to maximally reduce alcohol consumption for 30 days. Participants will be required to wear an ankle biosensor (SCRAM monitor) at all times, which is used to monitor participants' drinking behavior. At 30 days, participants will complete a full day of follow-up, including cognitive testing, neuroimaging, blood testing, liver Fibroscan, and questionnaires. Many participants will also provide a stool sample for gut microbiome assessment at each time point. At 30 days, participants will participate in a motivational interview to discuss perceived benefits and obstacles to drinking reduction, and most participants will continue CM to 90 days (but can opt out at this point). Participants will complete another full-day assessment at 90 days, at which point persons may choose to drink or not on their own (no more CM). A final assessment will be conducted at 12 months. This A-B-A design will enable us to clearly identify whether alcohol effects on cognition and brain function are reversible in the context of HIV, and analyze specific cerebral and systemic pathophysiological factors contributing to these effects. The inclusion of HIV- adults will enable subgroup comparisons of alcohol reduction effects in the context of HIV vs. no-HIV. These HIV-negative participants will be recruited from the same settings as our HIV+ participants, and will include a similar proportion by age, race, and gender as the HIV+ participants. The study team will use information from the MI data and our other assessments to elucidate factors that predict both short term (during CM) and long-term (1-year) alcohol reductions, and study how changes in alcohol consumption affect important HIV clinical outcomes that will be monitored over time.

This proposed study continues a line of research by Doctors Cohen, Cook, Kahler, and colleagues on heavy alcohol use, HIV-associated brain dysfunction, and long-term HIV outcomes. The study will build on our past findings to determine the extent to which marked reductions in alcohol consumption at 30 days and again at 90 days via contingency management (CM) improves cognitive-behavioral performance, underlying brain functions and pathophysiology, and HIV-associated health outcomes. This feature in itself is a novel contribution and has rarely been done, but more importantly, it reflects the mission of the collaboration to develop actionable data on clinical trajectories in HIV infected heavy drinkers over age 50 that will instill high confidence in guiding next therapeutic steps. The study team will obtain a better understanding of how persons with HIV stop drinking, and what factors influence long-term drinking changes. These important clinical and scientific questions need resolution for successful treatment and management of HIV+ adults. This study is motivated by evidence that HIV-associated neurocognitive dysfunction continues despite effective combined anti-retroviral therapies (cART). Even mild cognitive impairments have detrimental functional effects and health outcomes that worsen as HIV+ people age. Heavy alcohol consumption is common among HIV+ adults, and contributes to functional brain disturbances directly or indirectly via systemic metabolic or inflammatory disturbances. However, our past findings indicate that current alcohol use is more strongly associated with cognitive and brain dysfunction among HIV+ adults than lifetime consumption; and that adverse brain effects occur primarily with heavy drinking. Our overarching hypothesis is that the impact of ongoing heavy alcohol use on the brain and cognition may be reversible, providing a strong impetus for the proposed study. The study team will conduct our research in Florida, which has the highest number of new HIV infections in the US, as well as an increasingly diverse population with HIV+, 50% of whom are now aged 50 years or over in the state. Our research will seek to modify alcohol consumption by using contingency management (CM) and measure for changes in brain pathophysiology and function, as well as changes in systemic inflammation, and gut and liver pathologies which are hypothesized pathways by which alcohol may increase brain dysfunction. The study team will also measure neurocognitive functioning related to learning, attention-executive functions, working memory, and processing speed, domains in which HIV+ persons experience persistent impairment. the study team will use Motivational Interviewing (MI) to learn more about how persons with and without HIV reduce drinking, what factors are associated with long-term drinking changes, and how these drinking changes influence HIV clinical health behavior and outcomes. If the impact of alcohol on systemic and cerebral inflammation is temporary, then reducing or eliminating alcohol consumption could dramatically improve cognitive function and indices of brain health, even among people who have consumed alcohol for many years in the past. Our research will directly test hypotheses that ongoing heavy alcohol consumption is associated with brain pathophysiology and inflammation that impairs both functioning and cognitive processing, and that the inflammation and its sequelae are reversible in most HIV+ persons with alcohol cessation. The proposed sample will be 140 adults with HIV infection and 40 adults without HIV infection (at least 25% female; age \>50 years). Participants will be recruited from heavy drinkers (\>=14 drinks/week women, \>=21 drinks/week men) with HIV infection identified from our ongoing Florida Cohort. HIV- participants will be recruited from community medical clinics where flyers will be posted.