Alcoholism
Alcoholism tends to run in families, suggesting that addiction, at least in part, has an underlying genetic cause. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have discovered a gene linked to alcohol dependency. Laboratory mice deficient in the gene were found to consume excessive amounts of alcohol, preferring ethanol to water and evincing highly anxious behavior in a maze test.
When parents send their daughters off to college, few think they may return home as victims. Yet roughly 10 percent of women have experienced an attempted or completed rape during their first year at an American college and, often, alcohol is involved. This association is reinforced by findings published in the April issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, namely, that college women have a much greater chance of experiencing victimization ? both sexual and nonsexual ? on the days they drink.
Both researchers and clinicians can attest to the high co-occurrence of alcoholism and other psychiatric disorders, although the exact contribution of genetic and environmental factors to coexisting psychopathologies remains unclear. New findings have uncovered the important role that an environment of childhood abuse ? sexual, physical or both ? appears to play in the development of psychiatric comorbidity among alcoholic patients. "Our findings clearly indicate that childhood abuse ? more specifically, sexual abuse and combinations of sexual and physical abuse ? is an important factor for the presence of comorbid anxiety disorders in treated alcoholics, particularly regarding social phobia, agoraphobia, and posttraumatic stress disorder," said the study's lead researcher.
Neuropeptide Y is the most abundant and widely distributed peptide, and is involved in a variety of neurobiological functions, including anxiety, pain, memory, and feeding behavior. Although previous animal research has implicated NPY systems in alcohol abuse and alcoholism, findings published in the December issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research are the first to show that a compound that blocks NPY activity may be useful for alcohol treatment.
The association among anger, alcohol and aggression is not as clear as it may first seem. A new study that teases apart three different components of anger ? affective, cognitive and behavioral ? has found that it is behavioral anger that contributes the most to alcohol-related aggression among both men and women. "We know that there's a link between alcohol and aggression," said Peter R. Giancola, associate professor of psychology, director of the University of Kentucky Alcohol Research Laboratory, and first author of the study, "but does it occur it everybody? No, there are plenty of people who drink a lot and they get sleepy and happy, just as there are plenty of people who drink and they get out of control. That's the obvious part. The not-so-obvious part is figuring out what predicts who will and who will not become aggressive when they drink."
Scientists at UCSF's Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center have identified a single brain protein that can account for most of the intoxicating effects of alcohol. The finding pinpoints perhaps the best target yet for a drug to block alcohol's effect and potentially treat alcoholism, the scientists say.
The mechanisms by which alcohol acts on the brain are thought to be similar throughout the animal kingdom, since species from worms and fruit flies to mice and humans all become intoxicated at similar alcohol concentrations. But although studies have identified a number of genes that can partially influence how alcohol affects behavior, this is the first finding that a single gene and the brain protein it codes for - known as an ion channel - are responsible for the intoxicating effects of alcohol in a living organism, according to the researchers.
Pretreating transplanted livers with the immune molecule interleukin-6 (IL-6) dramatically increased survival of rats receiving organs with fatty degeneration--a common condition in humans that typically reduces transplant viability. The results suggest a means of making it possible to use a higher percentage of available donor livers for transplantation in humans. With over three times as many Americans needing transplants as there are available donor livers, an effective approach to increasing the number of viable donor organs would help narrow the gap between demand and supply.
Research shows that people who experience fragmentary blackouts (FBs) are more likely to misremember drinking experiences after alcohol is consumed. These same individuals report strong positive expectations about future alcohol consumption. Researchers believe that some memory-impaired drinkers 'fill in the gaps' with information that conforms to an existing belief system, which may in turn lead to heavier drinking.
A long-term study of patients in Rochester, Minn., with the eating disorder anorexia nervosa found that their survival rates did not differ from the expected survival rates of others of the same age and sex. The results, published in the March issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, add to the knowledge of anorexia nervosa and point to other areas that need greater study from researchers. "Although our data suggest that overall mortality is not increased among community patients with anorexia nervosa in general, these findings should not lead to complacency in clinical practice because deaths do occur," says L. Joseph Melton, III, M.D., Mayo Clinic epidemiologist and an author of the report.
Researchers have identified a genetic factor that appears to influence anxiety in women. Combining DNA analysis, recordings of brain activity, and psychological tests, investigators at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) found that Caucasian and American Indian women with the same gene variant had similarly high scores on tests that measure anxiety. These women also had similar electroencephelograms (EEG) -- recordings of brain electrical activity as unique as an individual's fingerprints -- that showed characteristics of anxious temperament, further strengthening the association of this shared genetic factor with anxiety. The study appears in the current issue of the journal Psychiatric Genetics.
A common genetic variant influences individual responses and adaptation to pain and other stressful stimuli and may underlie vulnerability to many psychiatric and other complex diseases, reports David Goldman, M.D., Chief, Laboratory of Neurogenetics, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and colleagues at NIAAA and the University of Michigan. COMT val158met Genotype Affects m-Opioid Neurotransmitter Responses to a Pain Stressor appears in the February 21 issue of Science.
Drinking does not necessarily lead to barroom brawling, but the amount of alcohol consumed by participants in an aggressive situation can make a difference in how severe or injurious the brawl turns out to be, according to new research.
The results announced in the International Journal of Psychophysiology this month show a link between neurofeedback training and improved memory in a 40 person trial. Dr David Vernon, from Imperial College London at the Charing Cross hospital says: "Previous research has indicated that neurofeedback can be used to help treat a number of conditions including Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, epilepsy and alcoholism by training particular aspects of brain activity, but this is the first time we have shown a link between the use of neurofeedback, and improvements in memory." Neurofeedback is a learning procedure that has been involved in treatments enabling participants to normalize behaviour, stabilize mood and improve their cognitive performance. It works by allowing people to watch their brain activity, and through this, find a way to correct or improve it.
Brain molecules similar to the active compound in marijuana help to regulate alcohol consumption, according to new reports by scientists. In studies conducted with a strain of mice known to have a high preference for alcohol, the scientists found greatly reduced alcohol intake in mice specially bred to lack CB1, the brain receptor for innate marijuana-like substances known as endocannabinoids. The effect was age dependent, the Bethesda group found. The New York scientists showed that the endocannabinoid system activates a brain region known as the nucleus accumbens, which plays a major role in mediating the rewarding effects of alcohol.
The widely reported health benefits of drinking a moderate amount of alcohol do not extend to African-Americans, according to a new study. These findings follow a widely reported Jan. 9 New England Journal of Medicine article saying that moderate daily or near-daily alcohol consumption could decrease a man's risk of heart disease. The researchers in the new study, published in the January issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, suggest that the difference in protective benefits of alcohol for black men could also be a result of not how much people drink but how they do it.
