title: Could a continuous measure of individual transmissible risk be useful in clinical assessment of substance use disorder? Findings from the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Toward meeting the need for a measure of individual differences in substance use disorder (SUD) liability that is grounded in the multifactorial model of SUD transmission, this investigation tested to what degree transmissible SUD risk is better measured using the continuous Transmissible Liability Index (TLI) (young adult version) compared to alternative contemporary clinical methods.
  
  
  METHODS
  Data from 9535 18- to 30-year-olds in the 2001-2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, a U.S. representative sample, were used to compute TLI scores and test hypotheses. Other variables were SUDs of each DSM-IV drug class, clinical predictors of SUD treatment outcomes, treatment seeking and usage, age of onset of SUDs and substance use (SU), and eligibility for SUD clinical trials.
  
  
  RESULTS
  TLI scores account for variation in SUD risk over and above parental lifetime SUD, conduct and antisocial personality disorder criteria and frequency of SU. SUD risk increases two- to four-fold per standard deviation increment in TLI scores. The TLI is associated with SUD treatment seeking and usage, younger age of onset of SU and SUD, and exclusion from traditional clinical trials of SUD treatment.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The TLI can identify persons with high versus low transmissible SUD risk, worse prognosis of SUD recovery and to whom extant SUD clinical trials results may not generalize. Recreating TLI scores in extant datasets facilitates etiology and applied research on the full range of transmissible SUD risk in development, treatment and recovery without obtaining new samples.
authors.affiliation: Center for Education and Drug Abuse Research, University of Pittsburgh, USA. tar27@pitt.edu
authors.forename: Ty A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Ridenour
authors.forename: Levent
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kirisci
authors.forename: Ralph E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Tarter
authors.forename: Michael M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Vanyukov
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000208:ethnology; D002492:Central Nervous System Depressants; D002648:Child; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D003625:Data Collection; D016208:Databases, Factual; D000431:Ethanol; D005260:Female; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012306:Risk; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012307:Risk Factors; D012737:Sex Factors; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000208:ethnology / Q000378:metabolism; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D002492:Central Nervous System Depressants; D000431:Ethanol