Studies to Look at Role of Alcohol in HIV Risk in Heterosexual Women, Reducing Drinking-Related HIV Risk in College-Age Women

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The relationship between drinking and HIV/AIDS in women will be the focus of studies to be conducted under two grants totaling $3.1 million awarded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) to researchers at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Additions.

A $1.9 million grant awarded to Maria Testa, Ph.D., will support a study of how to reduce binge-drinking, incidents of indiscriminate sex, sexual assault and STD/HIV infection in college-age women.

The study is an outgrowth of Testa's 1999 Independent Scientist Award from NIAAA that extended her work from basic to prevention research. Testa, a senior research scientist at RIA and research associate professor in the UB School of Social Work and in the Department of Psychology in the UB College of Arts and Sciences, will work with RIA scientists Jennifer A. Livingston, Ph.D., and Kurt H. Dermen, Ph.D.

Working with a $1.2 million NIAAA grant, Kathleen A. Parks, Ph.D., RIA senior research scientist, will lead a study of the role of alcohol in increased risk for HIV among heterosexual women between the ages of 18 and 30. Other scientists participating in the study are R. Lorraine Collins, Ph.D., RIA senior scientist and research professor in the UB Department of Psychology, and Amy M. Buddie, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.

Testa noted that "when compared to other groups, female adolescents are at higher risk of STD infection and sexual assault. Alcohol, particularly binge drinking, is implicated in many sexual incidents involving young women, and we believe that new methods of intervention and prevention are necessary."

She said her study will develop and test a prevention program designed to reduce young women's vulnerability to alcohol-related sexual assault and HIV/STD infection. The innovative intervention method will involve development of educational material for parents about adolescent alcohol use and its negative consequences, and then enlist parents to communicate this information to their teen-agers.

Two versions of the intervention will be compared: one that focuses solely on adolescent alcohol use and another that addresses issues of partner selection and sexual assertiveness, as well as alcohol use.

Six hundred female students and their mothers will be recruited during the summer before the daughters enter college. Researchers will assess their success by examining drinking behavior, drinking-related consequences, sexual behavior and negative sexual outcomes (i.e., sexual assault and STD infection) reported by female students during their first year of college.

"This project will help us to understand the relative importance of alcohol use in the acquisition of HIV," Testa noted, "as well as compare the impact of an alcohol reduction intervention with the impact of an alcohol plus sexual risk reduction intervention on sexual outcomes."

An innovative technology called Interactive Voice Response (IVR) will be used for the first time in Parks' study of substance use and risky sexual behavior. Over a 12-week time period, participants will be asked to call an 800 number and respond to questions using the touch-tone keypad. Recruitment of 300 women for the study will begin in the spring of 2004.

"This population of women is at high-risk for experiencing victimization and especially sexual victimization," according to Parks. "They drink in an atmosphere -- bars -- that is potentially a venue for meeting new men."

In a pilot study of 200 women in 1996-97, Parks found that 49 percent of women who drank in bars left the bar with someone they met for the first time that night. Thirty percent of the 200 reported having sex with someone new the first night. Twenty-eight percent of the sample reported sexual victimization of some kind and 11 percent reported attempted or completed rape.

"In the new study we will consider the relationships among alcohol use, social context, and risky sexual behavior and risk for HIV," Parks stated, "by women who drink in bars, as opposed to home." The women in the study will be between the ages of 18 and 30, report weekly bar drinking and report having six drinks on one occasion, on average, twice a week.

For purposes of the study, risky sexual behaviors for HIV will be viewed as unprotected sexual behaviors and sexual assault.

Scientists at UB's Research Institute on Addictions have been advancing the knowledge, prevention and treatment of addictions since 1970.