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Adolescent Alcohol Expsoure May Lead To Long-term Risky Decision Making

October 3rd, 2009

From ScienceDaily.com:

Picture this: A bunch of adolescent rats walk into a bar and start consuming Jell-O shots. Lots of them.

Then, three weeks later, some of those party rats are given the choice of pushing one lever that always will give them two sugary pellets or another lever that will give them a larger but uncertain reward of either four or zero treats. The alcohol-consuming rats tend to opt for uncertain rewards while a control group of teetotaling rodents match their choice well to whichever lever had the probability giving the larger reward.

That’s what happened in a scenario created by University Washington scientists investigating the neurobiological underpinnings of a link between adolescent alcohol abuse and later adult decision-making impairments. The research, being published this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, appears to show a causal link between early heavy drinking and adult decision-making.

“We know early exposure to alcohol and other substances is a predictor of later substance abuse in humans. It is a novel concept to think that early exposure might have long-term cognitive effects. But we can’t test this on people. This model using rats lends support to causal link between early alcohol use and later increased risky decision making,” said Nicholas Nasrallah, a UW psychology doctoral student and co-author of the study.

“We can’t establish causal links based on existing human data but this animal model allowed us to establish this link,” said corresponding author Ilene Bernstein, a UW professor of psychology and faculty member of the program in neurobiology and behavior.

“Scientists believe regions of the brain, including those implicated in decision making, are slow to develop and development extends into adolescence. This study shows that these late-developing structures in rats are affected by high alcohol use.”

Rats typically do not drink alcohol, but researchers have found that they will consume ethanol when it is combined with gelatin. For this study, one group of rats was given 24-hour access to a 10 percent solution of ethanol in a tasty gel. The rats were 30 to 49 days old during the experiment, a time span that corresponds to human adolescence. These rats consumed the alcohol-laced gel each day, in amounts equivalent to a large number of drinks in human term,” Bernstein said.

A separate control group of rats was given a gel made without any alcohol. At the end of the 20 days the gelatin was withdrawn from both groups. Three weeks later, half of the animals from each group were trained to press the levers to receive the treats. Part of the training included what is called a forced choice where there was only one lever to press. This gave the rats an opportunity to sample the pay off schedule on the uncertain lever that day. Three days of trials were run with the payoff for the large but uncertain reward coming 75 percent of the time and then dropping to 50 percent and 25 percent on subsequent days.

The alcohol-exposed rats showed a strong bias toward the uncertain lever, even when the chance of receiving rewards on the third day diminished to only one in four. The control rats, however, behaved differently and adjusted perfectly to the changing conditions of the experiment, thus gaining more treats than the alcohol-exposed rats.

A second experiment tested whether effects of adolescent alcohol exposure were persistent by waiting three months after the gelatin was withdrawn before testing the remaining rats. The effects were the same suggesting that the influence of adolescent alcohol exposure on decision making does not diminish over time.

“The known association between behavior and high levels of alcohol use puts people at risk for a number of bad outcomes, particularly substance use,” said Bernstein. “Age of exposure to drugs is the No. 1 factor predictive of substance abuse later in life. Adolescent drinking is an epidemic today. This research raises a concern that if the brain is permanently changed by alcohol we need to place more emphasis on preventing adolescent alcohol use.”

The National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism funded the research. Tom Yang, a former UW undergraduate student, was a co-author of the paper.

Alcohol and the elderly

September 22nd, 2009

Studies point to benefits in a drink a day, but many caveats remain

From ChicagoTribune.com:

Seniors may help ward off dementia by indulging in a beer or a glass of wine daily, new studies suggest.

But there’s an important caveat: The findings apply to healthy people, not those with mild cognitive impairments or other chronic medical conditions.

The studies add to scientific literature documenting potential health benefits associated with moderate alcohol consumption. For seniors, benefits include a reduced risk of dementia, heart disease, diabetes, disability and stroke.

It’s well known that moderate drinkers tend to get more exercise, weigh less and be healthier overall. Though researchers try to adjust for those and other differences they may fail to do so sufficiently, said Dr. Alison Moore, assistant professor of medicine and psychiatry at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine.

The newest research comes out of Wake Forest University and was presented this summer at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease in Vienna. The report looked at people 75 and older who had 8 to 14 drinks a week. Those without memory problems at the start of the six-year study were 37 percent less likely to develop dementia than people who didn’t drink at all.

What could account for the result? Research suggests that moderate alcohol consumption prevents heart disease and perhaps stroke as well by keeping blood clots from forming, raising so-called “good” cholesterol, and making blood less viscous.

“Things that are good for your heart are good for your brain,” said lead researcher Dr. Kaycee Sink, a geriatrician at Wake Forest.

A July study in The American Journal of Psychiatry confirms the positive finding. It analyzed 15 previous studies involving more than 28,000 individuals over the age of 60 and discovered that men who drank moderately were 45 percent less likely to develop dementia. For women, the reduction in risk was 27 percent.

But those beneficial effects don’t apply to everyone. In the Wake Forest study, older adults with mild cognitive impairments fared worse when they consumed any amount of alcohol. Also, heavy drinkers were almost twice as likely to develop dementia.

These exceptions don’t come as a surprise. Alcohol is known to have a sedative effect, potentially impairing a senior’s mental status, balance and coordination and heightening an older adult’s confusion and susceptibility to falls and accidents, experts note.

Also, alcohol interacts poorly with many medications routinely taken by older people, sometimes lessening their effectiveness. A higher risk of some kinds of cancer is also associated with alcohol, complicating the calculation of potential benefits versus harm. Then, there’s the potential for addiction: As many as 11 percent of seniors admitted to hospitals exhibit symptoms of alcoholism, according to government data.

Biologically, seniors metabolize alcohol more slowly than younger adults and have less tolerance to liquor. Given the same number of drinks, an older adult will have higher blood alcohol levels than someone who’s middle-age, according to Samir Zakhari, director of the division of metabolism and health effects at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

On a practical level, that means seniors need to be more careful after having a drink or two, said Sarah Jo Nixon, chief of the division of addiction research at the University of Florida. Older adults should wait at least an hour before driving, she said.

Recommendations call for older men to have no more than two drinks a day and for older women to have no more than one drink a day — if they already have the habit. It doesn’t make sense for seniors to start drinking if they’ve abstained during middle age, in part because it probably takes many years for potential benefits to accrue, experts say.

“Basic clinical advice is, ‘If you don’t drink, don’t start, and if you do drink, watch how much you drink,’ ” said Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

Blushing Drinkers at Risk for Esophageal Cancer

March 27th, 2009

From: NYTimes.com

People whose faces turn red when they drink alcohol may be facing more than embarrassment. The flushing may indicate an increased risk for a deadly throat cancer, researchers report.

The flushing response, which may be accompanied by nausea and a rapid heartbeat, is caused mainly by an inherited deficiency in an enzyme called ALDH2, a trait shared by more than a third of people of East Asian ancestry — Japanese, Chinese or Koreans. As little as half a bottle of beer can trigger the reaction.

The deficiency results in problems in metabolizing alcohol, leading to an accumulation in the body of a toxin called acetaldehyde. People with two copies of the gene responsible have such unpleasant reactions that they are unable to consume large amounts of alcohol. This aversion actually protects them against the increased risk for cancer.

But those with only one copy can develop a tolerance to acetaldehyde and become heavy drinkers.

“What we’re trying to do here is raise awareness of this risk factor among doctors and their ALDH2-deficient patients,” said Dr. Philip J. Brooks, an investigator with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and an author of the report published on Thursday in the journal PLoS Medicine. “It’s a pretty serious risk.”

The malignancy, called squamous cell esophageal cancer, is also caused by smoking and can be treated with surgery, but survival rates are very low. Even moderate drinking increases the risk, but it rises sharply with heavier consumption. An ALDH2-deficient person who has two beers a day has six to 10 times the risk of developing esophageal cancer as a person not deficient in the enzyme.

Reducing drinking can significantly reduce the incidence of this cancer among Asian adults. The researchers calculate that if moderate- or heavy-drinking ALDH2-deficient Japanese men reduced their consumption to under nine drinks a week, 53 percent of esophageal squamous cell cancers in that group could be prevented.

There is some anecdotal evidence that young people treat the flushing as a cosmetic response to be countered with antihistamines while continuing to drink. Ignoring the symptom and continuing to drink is likely to increase the incidence of esophageal cancer, researchers said.

To determine risk, doctors can ask their patients two simple questions. First, do you flush after drinking a glass of beer? Second, in the first one or two years after you began drinking, did you flush after having a beer?

The second question covers the possibility that a person has become tolerant to the effect.

Dr. Brooks said that the two questions give doctors an easy way to find out if the patient is ALDH2-deficient. There is also a patch test in which an ethanol-soaked pad is applied to the skin. If it causes reddening after 10 or 15 minutes, there is a high likelihood that the person is ALDH2-deficient.

Resveratrol prevents fatty liver

November 6th, 2008

From worldhealth.net

New research has found that resveratrol, the polyphenol found in red wine, may help to prevent fat from building up in the liver, thus suggesting that it may help to protect against, or even treat, alcoholic fatty liver.

Joanne M Ajmo and colleagues conducted a study to investigate the effects of resveratrol on alcoholic fatty liver in mice. Results showed that mice given alcohol and resveratrol had significantly less fat in their livers, and metabolized fat that was already present in the liver far more quickly, than mice fed alcohol alone.

Long-term alcohol abuse is known to inhibit the signaling molecules sirtuin 1 (SIRT1) – which has been linked to longevity – and AMP-activated kinase (AMPK), which play an important role in fat metabolism in the liver. Resveratrol is known to be a potent activator of both SIRT1 and AMPK, indeed, the researchers believe that its protective role on the liver is “in whole or in part mediated through the upregulation of a SIRT1-AMPK signaling system.”

The researchers concluded: “Our study suggests that resveratrol may serve as a promising agent for preventing or treating human alcoholic fatty liver disease.”

More information about Resveratrol can be found by visiting: iNutritionals.com

Alcohol shrinks brain

October 26th, 2008

Fromworldhealth.net

New research has shown that people who drink a lot of alcohol have smaller brains.

Carol Ann Paul and colleagues studied data obtained from 1,839 adults who took part in the Framingham Offspring Study to examine the association between total cerebral brain volume (TCBV) and 5 categories of alcohol consumption (abstainers, former drinkers, low, moderate, high).

Analysis of the data led the researchers to discover a “significant negative linear relationship between alcohol consumption and total cerebral brain volume.” In other words, the more a person drinks the smaller his or her brain volume, thus suggesting that alcohol consumption shrinks the brain.

Results also showed that the association between alcohol consumption and brain volume was greater in women than in men. The researchers suspect that this could be due to the fact that women are generally more susceptible to the effects of alcohol than men.

The researchers conclude: “The public health effect of this study gives a clear message about the possible dangers of drinking alcohol. Prospective longitudinal studies are needed to confirm these results as well as to determine whether there are any functional consequences associated with increasing alcohol consumption. This study suggests that, unlike the associations with cardiovascular disease, alcohol consumption does not have any protective effect on brain volume.”