Screening Evaluation for Studies of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)

This protocol has three purposes: (1) to evaluate subjects for inclusion or exclusion from
other NIAAA protocols; (2) to provide a common set of descriptive information that will be
available on all NIAAA research subjects; (3) to allow NIAAA medical and nursing staff to
treat alcoholic patients for acute alcohol intoxication or alcohol withdrawal before
requiring patients to consent to evaluation for participation in research studies.

Information collected will include such items as psychiatric diagnoses, presence or absence
of brain, liver or other organ damage, history of the amount of past alcohol consumption,
other substance use and family history of alcoholism. This information will allow
investigators to determine for which, if any, NIAAA research studies a subject is eligible.
In order to avoid requiring intoxicated subjects to consent for procedures such as HIV
testing, psychiatric interviews, and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of the brain we will
obtain consent from all alcoholic subjects in two phases, using two separate consent forms.
The first consent form will express the subject's desire to be admitted to the NIAAA
inpatient unit for the purpose of treatment for alcoholism and will authorize only medical
evaluation and treatment for alcoholism and associated problems. After an alcoholic subject
has been admitted to the inpatient unit and is judged to be no longer intoxicated or
suffering from acute alcohol withdrawal he or she will be presented with the second consent
which will describe the evaluation for participation in other NIAAA research studies.
Non-alcoholic, healthy controls will sign only one consent form describing the data to be
collected and evaluation for participation in other NIAAA research studies.