Background The current criteria for alcohol use disorders (AUD) do not include consumption (quantity/frequency) measures of alcohol intake, in part due to the difficulty of these measures in humans. Animal models of ethanol self-administration have been fundamental in advancing our understanding of the neurobiological basis of (AUD) and can address quantity/frequency measures with accurate measurements over prolonged periods of time. The non-human primate (NHP) model of voluntary oral alcohol self-administration has documented both binge drinking and drinking to dependence and can be used to test the stability of consumption measures over time. Methods and Results Here, an extensive set of alcohol intakes (g/kg/day) was analyzed from a large multi-cohort population of Rhesus (Macaca mulatta) monkeys (n=31). Daily ethanol intake was uniformly distributed over chronic (12 months) access for all animals. Underlying this distribution of intakes were subpopulations of monkeys that exhibited distinctive clustering of drinking patterns, allowing us to categorically define very heavy drinking (VHD), heavy drinking (HD), binge drinking (BD), and low drinking (LD). These categories were stable across the 12-month assessed by the protocol, but exhibited fluctuations when examined at shorter intervals. Conclusions The establishment of persistent drinking categories based on quantity/frequency suggests that consumption variables can be used to track long-term changes in behavioral, molecular or physiochemical mechanisms related to our understanding of diagnosis, prevention, intervention and treatment efficacies.

Background An estimated 18 million adults in the United States meet the clinical criteria for diagnosis of alcohol abuse or alcoholism, a disorder ranked as the third leading cause of preventable death. In addition to brain pathology, heavy alcohol consumption is co-morbid with damage to major organs including heart, lungs, liver, pancreas and kidneys. Much of what is known about risk for and consequences of heavy consumption derive from rodent or retrospective human studies. The neurobiological effects of chronic intake in rodent studies may not easily translate to humans due to key differences in brain structure and organization between species, including a lack of higher-order cognitive functions, and differences in underlying prefrontal cortical neural structures that characterize the primate brain. Further, rodents do not voluntarily consume large quantities of EtOH and they metabolize it more rapidly than primates. Methods The basis of the Monkey Alcohol Tissue Research Resource (MATRR) is that nonhuman primates (NHPs), specifically monkeys, show a range of drinking excessive amounts of alcohol (>3.0 g/kg or a 12 drink equivalent/day) over long periods of time (12–30 months) with concomitant pathological changes in endocrine, hepatic and central nervous system (CNS) processes. The patterns and range of alcohol intake that monkeys voluntarily consume parallel what is observed in humans with alcohol use disorders and the longitudinal experimental design spans stages of drinking from the ethanol-naïve state to early exposure through chronic abuse. Age- and sex-matched control animals self-administer an isocaloric solution under identical operant procedures. Results The MATRR is a unique post-mortem tissue bank that provides CNS and peripheral tissues, and associated bioinformatics from monkeys that self-administer ethanol using a standardized experimental paradigm to the broader alcohol research community. Conclusions This resource provides a translational platform from which we can better understand the disease processes associated with alcoholism.