The holidays generate both positive and negative emotions, and drinking is one of the methods that people often use to cope.
Early-age drinking is common in many western nations; for example, 54 percent of Australian 14- to 19-year olds have reported past-year alcohol use. Although early-age drinking has been associated with developing later alcohol problems, findings have been inconsistent. This study used data from the Australian Parental Supply of Alcohol Longitudinal Study to examine age at first drink, age of first drunkenness, and associations with subsequent drinking during adolescence.
In a study of adolescent boys and girls, neuroscientists have found a sex difference in a gene linked to substance use disorders.
An anti-inflammatory drug may have the potential to stall the damaging effects of alcohol on the fetal brain, a new study suggests. Ibuprofen reduced neuroinflammation and behavioral signs of alcohol exposure in a rat model of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD).
Although estimates vary, scientists believe that 50 to 64 percent of the risk of alcohol use disorders (AUDs) is inherited. One way to identify this risk is through a person’s subjective response to alcohol. This study investigated the effects of two single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) or changes in DNA sequence called rs279858 (in the GABRA2 gene) and rs2832407 (in the GRIK1 gene) – previously linked to AUD risk – on individuals’ subjective responses to intravenously administered alcohol.
A simple blood test for a compound called PEth can accurately identify critically ill hospital patients who misuse alcohol, a study has found. The finding is important because patients who misuse alcohol tend to have worse outcomes.
Rural counties continue to rank lowest among counties across the U.S., in terms of health outcomes. A group of national organizations including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National 4-H Council are leading the way to close the rural health gap.
Heavy drinking impairs balance and motor coordination, which is why increased body sway is a useful indicator to both police and bartenders that a person may be intoxicated. People often drink alcohol at the same time that they ingest stimulant drugs such as caffeine or nicotine, yet it is unclear how these stimulants affect alcohol-induced balance impairment. This study examined whether combining a high-caffeine energy drink with alcohol can influence expected alcohol-induced increases in body sway.
The reward center of the brain is much more attuned to the pleasurable effects of alcohol when estrogen levels are elevated, an effect that may underlie the development of addiction in women, according to a study on mice at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Afterschool programs with positive, responsive, and organized environments can have academic benefits for students, finds a new study by NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.
New research presented today at APHA’s 2017 Annual Meeting and Expo examined the effect of marijuana use and dependence on life achievement in young adults.
Compared to controls, patients with psoriasis (PsO) are at higher risk for serious liver disease than patients with rheumatoid arthritis – two autoimmune diseases often treated with similar drugs that can cause liver damage.
Alcohol-fueled parties might be seen as a rite of passage for many high school students, but they have an unexpected impact: binge-drinking behavior as teenagers can lead to problems with alcohol and other drug dependence later on in life.
Although drinking by U.S. adolescents has decreased during the last decade, more than 20 percent of U.S. high-school students continue to drink alcohol before the age of 14 years. This can have adverse effects on their neurodevelopment. For example, youth who initiate drinking before 14 years of age are four times more likely to develop psychosocial, psychiatric, and substance-use difficulties than those who begin drinking after turning 20 years of age. Little is known about how the age of alcohol-use onset influences brain development. This is the first study to assess the association between age of adolescent drinking onset and neurocognitive performance, taking into account pre-existing cognitive function.
The etiology (i.e., underlying causes) of a behavior, such as alcohol drinking, can change during adolescence and young adulthood. Prior alcohol research has shown that, in general: shared/common environment influences are strongest in early adolescence, declining in strength until young adulthood; unique environmental influences are moderate, but stable, during adolescence and young adulthood; and genetic influences are weakest during early adolescence, steadily increasing in strength until young adulthood. This study examined the relations between genetic and environmental etiologies of alcohol use and the influence of peer use, parental autonomy granting, and maternal closeness on this behavior.
Hackensack Meridian Health, New Jersey’s most comprehensive health care network, hosted a symposium to update providers and the community on the network’s strategies to help those suffering from substance use disorders, an event that drew 450 people and featured a compelling personal story of recovery and call to action from former Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy.
Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have expanded a statewide program called Training, Research and Education Driving Safety (TREDS) with the goal of reducing deaths from vehicular crashes.
In every U.S. state, it is illegal for adults to drive with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08 grams per deciliter (g/dL) or greater. In 2013, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended that states lower the BAC limit for driving from .08 to .05 grams. Most industrialized nations have already enacted a .05 BAC limit. This study investigated whether lowering the BAC limit to .05 would be an effective alcohol policy in the United States.
Any amount of alcohol exposure during pregnancy can cause extreme lasting effects on a child, according to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York.
Having a parent with an alcohol use disorder increases the risk for dating violence among teenagers, according to a study from the University at Buffalo Research Institute on Addictions.
Health care costs for privately insured patients with alcoholic cirrhosis are nearly twice that of non‐alcoholic cirrhosis patients in the United States, according to research presented this week at The Liver Meeting® — held by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.
Alcohol use disorder (AUD) often co-occurs with chronic pain (CP), yet the relationship between the two is complex – involving genetic, neurophysiological, and behavioral elements – and is poorly understood. This review addressed the genetic influences on brain reward and stress systems that neurological research suggests may contribute to the co-occurrence of AUD and CP.
The book, titled “Drinking, Drug Use and Addiction in the Autism Community,” explores why addiction is more common among individuals with ASD than it is within the general population and investigates how addiction and autism affect one another.
Sometimes scientists do not see the value of sharing their knowledge and expertise with non-scientists and members of the public may believe that researchers enjoy a rarefied existence. This critical review addresses the important, yet limited gap that exists between these two realms by discussing the Spit for Science project. Spit4Science is a university-wide research undertaking at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) that focuses on alcohol and other drug use and related mental-health outcomes. It incorporates two forms of participatory research that have gained increasing attention in recent years, community-engaged research and citizen science.
Michigan Technological University is leading a $1.8 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) study to understand alcohol’s effects on sleep, blood pressure and brain activity
Approximately 10 percent of Americans take a proton pump inhibitor drug to relieve symptoms of frequent heartburn and acid reflux. That percentage can be much higher for people with chronic liver disease. Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have discovered evidence in mice and humans that these medications alter gut bacteria in a way that promotes three types of chronic liver disease. The study is published October 10 in Nature Communications.
The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the National Institutes of Health has awarded Wayne State University $2,063,188 for a new study that will analyze longitudinal data spanning 20 years collected from five U.S. cohorts, including 480 African-American mothers and children in the Detroit Longitudinal Cohort Study, to take a closer look at the key developmental outcomes and prenatal alcohol exposure levels that characterize FASD.
Although alcohol is a legal substance for adults age 21 or older, it is the leading illicit substance used by underage American youth. Prior research has shown that youth exposed to alcohol advertisements have a greater risk of drinking. Alcohol-industry groups have developed voluntary codes, such as the Beer Institute Advertising & Marketing Code, stating that their advertising and marketing materials are intended for adults of legal purchasing age who choose to drink. This study examined whether alcohol brands more popular among youth were more likely than other brands to have aired television advertisements that violated the alcohol industry’s voluntary code by including youth-appealing content.
Ride-hailing services reduce drunk-driving crashes in some cities, reports a new study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania this month in the American Journal of Epidemiology. The research is the first to look at the specific effects of ride-hailing, or “ride-sharing,” within specific cities, rather than averaging data across multiple cities.
Friday and Saturday nights seem to be the universal nights for partying. They are the peak times for heavy drinking by young adults, often beyond what is considered heavy episodic drinking (HED) – five or more drinks per occasion for men, four or more for women. Although heavy drinking is assumed to be intentional, in fact very little is known about the extent to which heavy drinking is pre-planned and the factors that might contribute to a person’s drinking more than he or she intended. This study investigated drinking intentions at the beginning of an evening and individual and situational factors linked to subsequent drinking.
Hackensack Meridian Health Bayshore Medical Center recently launched the Opioid Overdose Recovery Program (OORP) designed to help combat drug addiction in the Bayshore region. Made possible through a state grant and provided by the RWJBarnabas Health Institute for Prevention, the program is designed to provide peer-to-peer bedside counseling with the goal of getting individuals who have been reversed by Narcan into an appropriate treatment program following an opioid overdose.
In an analysis of the epigenomes of people and mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine and the National Institutes of Health report that drinking alcohol may induce changes to a cholesterol-regulating gene.
Researchers from the University of Adelaide have found a new link between the brain's immune system and the desire to drink alcohol in the evening.
Alcohol use among underage youth – younger than 21 years of age – remains an important public-health issue, despite a decline in the past decade. The alcohol beverage industry denies that it promotes its products to underage youth. This study investigated whether alcohol brands popular among underage drinkers (12 to 20 years of age) are more likely than other alcohol brands to be advertised in magazines with large underage readerships.
Road-traffic injuries (RTIs), which are often fatal, are regrettable consequences of modern transportation. According to the World Health Organization, low- and middle-income countries have road-traffic fatality rates that are double those of high-income countries. It is well established that drinking alcohol increases the risk of a traffic crash. This study examined the role that alcohol plays in the risk of RTIs in 10 countries located in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Brief interventions in a primary care clinic can reduce patients’ risky substance use by 4.5 days per month — a 40 percent decline among the Latino patients surveyed — compared with people who did not receive the brief intervention.
Studies have shown that an early age of drinking initiation (ADI) increases the chance of developing an alcohol use disorder (AUD). There is limited evidence that ADI differs across ethnic groups. This study examined whether the pathway from ADI to AUD symptoms by early adulthood is influenced by two factors: ethnicity and having the alcohol metabolizing gene variant allele, ALDH2*2. This allele produces an inactive enzyme that leads to higher levels of acetaldehyde during alcohol metabolism, which are associated with unpleasant effects after drinking alcohol and a decreased risk for an AUD.
People tend to adjust behaviors across their lifespans as they adopt new roles – such as marriage or parenting – that are incompatible with prior behaviors. The transition to parenthood appears to be particularly relevant for women, leading to a reduction in alcohol consumption. This study of maternal alcohol use is the first to focus on age at transition to motherhood as a predictor of trajectories of risky drinking during a 17-year span.
BOSTON - Drinking too much alcohol can damage the liver, but investigators have discovered a protective response in the organ that might be targeted to help treat alcoholic liver disease. The team - led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania - also found that the same protective response may be involved in aversion to alcohol and could therefore help in the treatment of alcoholism.
Intoxicated, heavy drinkers have a tendency to act rashly in response to negative emotions, which can intensify the risk for intimate partner aggression, according to a study by Georgia State University and Purdue University.
Heavy drinking can have a number of negative consequences, including sex that is later regretted. Low sensitivity (LS) to alcohol’s effects – which characterizes the person who can “drink everyone under the table” – is a known risk factor for heavy drinking and its consequences. This study investigated LS and regretted sex from an unusual perspective, asking whether LS could be protective in some contexts, given that LS drinkers are generally less impaired from drinking at a given level. More specifically, the investigators tested whether LS was associated with differences in reports by men and women of alcohol-related regretted sex.
Older adults who consume alcohol moderately on a regular basis are more likely to live to the age of 85 without dementia or other cognitive impairments than non-drinkers, according to a University of California San Diego School of Medicine-led study.
Brittany Todd Texas Tech University has named Brittany Todd, associate director of the Office of Student Conduct, as director of the Risk Intervention & Safety Education (RISE) office. She will begin in the new position today (Aug. 1), filling the spot left when Kimberly Simón was named the university’s Title IX administrator in April.
Researchers have shown that a new genetic test could potentially help stem the tide of the opioid epidemic by predicting which patients are at risk of abusing prescription opioids. These findings were presented for the first time at the 69th AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo in San Diego.
A new study shows that a change in policy placing more restrictions on all hydrocodone-containing drugs has successfully decreased the use of certain opioids such as Vicodin. This research and a second study illuminating regional drug use trends in Canada were announced today at the 69th AACC Annual Scientific Meeting in San Diego, and could help to guide future strategies for combatting addiction.
Despite being saddled with many factors associated with drug and alcohol problems, undocumented immigrants are not increasing the prevalence of drug and alcohol crimes and deaths in the United States, according to a new University of Wisconsin-Madison study published in the American Journal of Public Health.
Drinking alcohol results in an alcohol use disorder (AUD) when consumption becomes excessive and dependence develops. Both stress and anxiety can contribute to the development of an AUD. Chronic stress can increase drinking, and chronic drinking can elevate anxiety and dysregulate normal responses to stressors. Behavioral flexibility and adaptive behavior – essential for controlling excessive drinking – are core functions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), This study used mice to examine the effects of combined alcohol and stress exposure on PFC function.
Many studies of alcohol use disorders (AUDs) use tasks that involve monetary rewards or losses to examine individual decision-making vis-à-vis alcohol and other substance use. Yet drinking typically occurs in specific social and incentive contexts that do not involve economic decision-making. This study examined decisions about attending, and drinking in, hypothetical drinking/social contexts wherein several different incentive and disincentive options were provided to the individual.
It’s no secret that university life often includes alcohol use, which can sometimes cause harm. Yet harm can also extend beyond the drinker, such as “secondhand harm” that is caused by intoxicated people: accidents or domestic, physical, or sexual violence; interrupted sleep or property destruction; and arguments, problems with relationships, or financial problems. Prior research suggests that more than 70 percent of college undergraduates have experienced harm from other students’ drinking. This study examined the prevalence and types of secondhand harm among Canadian undergraduates, and whether certain personality risks for alcohol use disorder – impulsivity, sensation seeking, hopelessness, anxiety sensitivity – can predict secondhand-harm exposure.
Fewer Australian teenagers are drinking alcohol but more needs to be done to curb the drinking habits of Aussie school students, based on the findings of the latest study by Adelaide researchers.
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