Arpana Agrawal

Additional Titles & Roles

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• Psychiatry Research Committee, Chair
• McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience, Operations Committee Member

Education & Training

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• Ph.D.: Virginia Commonwealth University, 2004

Major Awards

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• Dean’s Impact Award, 2024
• Henri Begleiter Award for Research Excellence, Research Society for Alcohol, 2022
• Theodore Reich Award for Early Career Contributions, International Society for Psychiatric Genetics, 2018
• Scott & Fuller Award for Early Career Contributions, Behavior Genetics Association, 2010

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Research Interests

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My research focuses on epidemiological and genomic approaches to the study of substance use and addiction. I am funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to study how genetic and environmental factors work together to shape our liability to use cannabis and become addicted to it. In addition, I am co-PI of the Substance Use Disorders Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC). The goal of our working group is to identify common genetic variants that are related to liability for alcohol, nicotine, cannabis and other drug use disorders, and further to relate these loci (and their aggregate effect) to genetic risk for other psychiatric traits (e.g., personality) and disorders (e.g., depression).

Recent Publications

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• Are There Causal Associations Between Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Cardiometabolic Phenotypes? A Genetic Correlation and Bi-Directional Mendelian Randomization Study

  Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, Jul 2026, In: American Journal of Medical Genetics, Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics. 201, 5, p. 321-330 10 p.

• Co-occurring chronic pain and opioid use disorder diagnoses in the All of Us Research Program: associations with social determinants of health, mental health conditions, and polygenic liability

  Johnson, E. C., Luo, Z., Romero Villela, P. N., Kadaba, S., Sarabudla, N., Balbona, J. V., Goodin, B. R., Haroutounian, S., Hatoum, A. S. & Agrawal, A., Jun 2026, In: EBioMedicine. 128, 106273.

• Trajectories of genetic risk across dimensions of alcohol use behaviors

  COGA Investigators & Spit for Science Working Group, May 2026, In: Addiction. 121, 5, p. 1153-1165 13 p.

• Runx1 transcription factor modulates opioid analgesia and withdrawal in humans and rodents

  Leduc-Pessah, H., McAllister, B. B., Sinha, S., Stokes-Heck, S., Nishizawa, D., Fan, C. Y., St-Pierre, M. K., Bradaia, A., Defaye, M., Burma, N. E., Damblon, J., Muñoz-Pino, E., Visser, F., Dorion, M. F., Healy, L. M., Tang, Y. M., Canet-Pons, J., van den Hoogen, N. J., Zhang, Z. & Antunes, F. T. T. & 20 others, Piscopo, V. E. C., Medina, M., Fukuda, K. I., Ichinohe, T., Nagashima, M., Hayashida, M., Johnson, E., Agrawal, A., Degenhardt, L., Martin, N. G., Zamponi, G. W., Nelson, E. C., Altier, C., Tremblay, M. E., Bousman, C., Stifani, S., De Koninck, Y., Ikeda, K., Biernaskie, J. & Trang, T., Mar 4 2026, In: Neuron. 114, 5, p. 903-921.e13

• Getting into the weed—the genetics of cannabis use in modern America

  Agrawal, A., Feb 2026, In: Neuropsychopharmacology. 51, 3, p. 550-551 2 p.

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Funded Research Projects

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View NIH Research