Genetics and Addiction

Substance abuse disorders co-occur with multiple psychiatric conditions. Our lab is trying to understand the clinical, genetic, and neurobiological underpinnings of prescription opioid addiction. This work utilizes data from the electronic health record as well as self-report questionnaires with the hopes of creating a comprehensive risk score that can be used for genomic discovery and brain imaging analyses.  In other funded work, we are trying to understand how to better assess substance abuse within the Geisinger population and to identify genes that are associated with improved outcomes in patients who are taking pharmacotherapy for their substance abuse disorders.