A 2026 ABCD Study preprint involving 11,868 youth found stable time-ordered predictors of teen substance-use initiation, but the adjusted effects were small: most estimates ranged from −0.01 to 0.02 initiation-probability points per 1-SD predictor increase. Research Highlights Large ABCD panel: Wei et al. analyzed 11,868 youth with repeated observations and interval-level initiation outcomes for alcohol, …
A 2026 cross-sectional study in Moshi, Tanzania found that only 26 of 246 injury patients who drank alcohol, or 10.6%, had ever told a healthcare provider about their alcohol use.1 The calibration result was contrary to the prediction: measured alcohol stigma did not track disclosure, while alcohol-related consequences did. Research Highlights Disclosure was rare: among …
A 2026 PRISMA-compliant systematic review and meta-analysis in Drug and Alcohol Review consolidated 30 publications covering 202 prevalence estimates from 120,041 South African adolescents: pooled lifetime prevalence was 35.09% for alcohol use, 25.47% for tobacco use, and 10.47% for cannabis use.1 Research Highlights 30 publications, 202 estimates: pooled data covered 120,041 South African adolescents. Alcohol …
The broad cytokine story failed its most direct community test: in 972 adults, depression, alcohol use, and alcohol use disorder (AUD) were not associated with C-reactive protein (CRP) or a pre-registered pro-inflammatory cytokine index. The only multiple-testing-corrected cytokine hits ran opposite the hypothesis — AUD was linked to lower IL-1β, IL-4, IL-10, and IL-12 — …
A 2026 Australian interview study involving 27 adults with methamphetamine use problems found that 21 participants, or 77.8%, had never previously sought treatment for methamphetamine use. Research Highlights Most had never sought treatment: Peart et al. interviewed 27 adults and found that 77.8% had not previously sought methamphetamine treatment before entering the parent trial.1 3 …
A 2026 eLife study recorded 3,881 lateral orbitofrontal cortex units in rats and found that prior cocaine use made the OFC over-distinguish task positions that controls treated as functionally equivalent. The headline result was not gross task failure: cocaine-experienced rats still performed the odor task, but their OFC ensembles showed higher S1-vs.-S2 decoding than sucrose …
Whether alcohol, cocaine, nicotine, and cannabis damage the same brain regions or different brain regions has been hard to settle in the addiction-imaging literature. A 2026 ENIGMA Addiction analysis by Georgiadis et al. — pooling 4,733 brains across 51 sites — now has an answer. Research Highlights Across 2,782 people with substance use disorder (SUD) …