The more a person stares at themselves while talking with a partner in an online chat, the more their mood degrades over the course of the conversation, a new study finds. Alcohol use appears to worsen this effect.
Pregnant women’s use of alcohol correlates with that of their partner, a new study from the University of Eastern Finland and Kuopio University Hospital shows.
A new theory of economic decision-making from Mina Mahmoudi, a lecturer in the Department of Economics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, offers an explanation as to why humans, in general, make decisions that are simply adequate, not optimal.
A study from Arizona State University and Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands has shown that conversations between a pair of 17-year-old friends can predict future drug and alcohol abuse. If the teens talked positively about alcohol or cannabis, they were more likely to be diagnosed with an alcohol or cannabis use disorder, respectively, by the time they were 27 years old.
Personal attitudes toward heavy alcohol consumption may be a better predictor of heavy drinking among college students than external factors such as peer pressure and a desire to conform, according to a Rutgers study.
In a newly published study, co-author H. Andrew Schwartz, PhD, of the Department of Computer Science at Stony Brook University, and colleagues determined that the language people used in Facebook posts can identify those at risk for hazardous drinking habits and alcohol use disorders.
Here are some of the latest articles added to the Behavioral Science channel on Newswise.
A five-year study has highlighted the importance of healthy sleep patterns in relation to future binge-drinking and cannabis use in adolescence and young adulthood, as reported in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. The work builds on growing evidence that sleep characteristics are predictive of future substance use and related problems in young people, and could inform strategies for substance use prevention and intervention. Most previous studies assessed only a small range of sleep characteristics, and had limited follow-up. In the new analysis, researchers used six annual assessments from the National Consortium on Alcohol and Neurodevelopment in Adolescence (NCANDA) study to examine whether multiple sleep characteristics in any year predict alcohol and cannabis use the following year. Data from over eight hundred NCANDA study participants, aged 12 to 21 at baseline, were included.
Deaths involving alcohol use disorder increased dramatically during the pandemic, according to a new study by Cedars-Sinai investigators. The study also found that young adults 25 to 44 years old experienced the steepest upward trend in alcohol use disorder mortality.
The language used in Facebook posts can identify people at risk of hazardous drinking and alcohol use disorders (AUDs), according to a new study. Social media platforms are a “low-cost treasure trove” of data, researchers claim, expanding the options for studying, screening, and helping people at risk. Social media content in recent years has been used to explore various public health phenomena. For example, language and “likes” have predicted depression, hospital visits, low birthweight, obesity, and life expectancy. Social media language has also been linked to patterns of alcohol consumption and related problems. For the study in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, investigators explored how convincingly the language of Facebook could be used to identify risky drinking. They compared the accuracy of multiple predictive tools, including a new technique for processing language that has rarely been applied to health research.
Pregnant women’s alcohol use is correlated with their partners’ drinking, according to a large European study — and partners are unlikely to meaningfully reduce or halt their alcohol consumption while expecting a baby. The findings may offer a new way of identifying women at risk of drinking in pregnancy and potentially intervening to prevent or reduce harm. Alcohol consumption during pregnancy can seriously impair fetal health and development, causing stillbirth and lifelong disabilities. These include fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs), the primary cause of non-genetic cognitive disability worldwide. Although the drinking patterns of women and their partners are known to be correlated, little attention has been given to partners’ alcohol use during pregnancy and how this may affect women’s drinking and pregnancy outcomes. For the study in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, investigators searched for associations between pregnant women’s and their partners’ alcohol us
A new generation of wearable alcohol sensor has potential for use as a self-management tool by social drinkers, as reported in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
Background: Sexual minority women disproportionately engage in heavy drinking and shoulder the burden of alcohol dependence. Although several intensive interventions are being developed to meet the needs of treatment-seeking sexual m...
A study of adult drinking in the US over time has identified distinct demographic subpopulations with diverging drinking trajectories during the first ten months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although population-wide average drinking increases in the pandemic were modest and time-limited, the aggregated data mask escalating drinking in certain subpopulations, raising public health concerns. The study, reported in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, provides insights into the sociodemographic communities that might benefit from intervention to counteract drinking increases − or reinforce drinking reductions − that were acquired during the pandemic.
A new paper in the Journal of Public Health, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that alcohol and tobacco products, in addition to foods high in sugar and fat, appear frequently in reality TV programs.
Gene editing may be a potential treatment for anxiety and alcohol use disorder in adults who were exposed to binge drinking in their adolescence, according to the results of an animal study published in the journal Science Advances. The researchers used a gene-editing tool called CRISPR-dCas9 in their experiments to manipulate the histone acetylation and methylation processes at the Arc gene in models of adult rats.
A study published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence shows that the connection of racial discrimination to problem drinking differs based on personality traits. People who tend to act impulsively in response to negative experiences are more likely to report problematic alcohol use that is associated with racism. But, people who enjoy seeking out new experiences are less likely to report problematic alcohol use that is associated with racism. Though this personality trait is thought to be a common risk factor for alcohol use disorder, this study suggests that people with sensation-seeking personalities can better tolerate or cope with difficult situations such as racism.
People may forgo displaying luxury brands and other signals of status when they want to convince others that they will collaborate well with a team, as people who signal their wealth and social status could be perceived as uncooperative, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
A new study found that disulfiram, a drug used to treat chronic alcoholism, can safely reduce anxiety levels in rodents.
Machine learning techniques can be used to predict treatment outcomes among people with alcohol use disorder (AUD), according to a study reported in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. Patients often return to heavy drinking during and after their treatment for AUD, and may need multiple rounds of treatment before they can achieve long-term abstinence from heavy alcohol use. The predictive models identified in this study could be used to develop clinical systems that allow clinicians and patients to anticipate drinking relapses and adjust treatment before they occur, enhancing clinical care and outcomes. Patient characteristics associated with relapse have been identified previously using traditional statistical techniques, but methodological limitations have made it difficult to leverage these associations to create optimal predictive models. Machine learning – a branch of artificial intelligence involving the use of computer algorithms that can build and automatically imp
New studies published in The Journal of the American Dental Association underscore the importance of regular dental visits in the prevention of the sixth most common cancer in the world – oral cancer.
A review of studies exploring changes in alcohol use during the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed an increase in problematic alcohol use in some countries. Overall, the pandemic’s impact on drinking was mixed, and likely dependent on multiple factors including the local social distancing and alcohol-specific policies in force. Although several countries, including the US, have previously reported higher alcohol sales during the pandemic, synthesized information on the impact on alcohol consumption was lacking. Factors potentially linked to greater pandemic drinking include social isolation, anxiety and depression, blurring of work and leisure hours, loss of employment, and the shift from in-premise to home-based drinking. However, for some people, the same factors may have prompted a reduction in drinking. Alcohol-related policies, as well as lockdown restrictions, varied around the world. In certain countries, such as South Africa, alcohol sales were temporarily banned, whereas in parts
Background: Alcohol consumption in pregnancy has been associated with serious fetal health risks and maternal complications. While previous systematic reviews of digital interventions during pregnancy have targeted smoking cessation ...
Adults who attended a four-day music festival subsequently exhibited diminished attentional performance that could have impaired their driving even after they were no longer intoxicated, an innovative study suggests. Alcohol is known to affect drivers’ attention and responses, both during acute intoxication and residually (while hungover). Little is known about which elements of cognition are affected by residual alcohol impairment, how vulnerable we might be to those effects, or how they interact with fatigue, another common source of driving impairment. This raises concerns about, for example, the ability of festival goers to drive home safely, even without traceable alcohol in their blood or breath. Assessing cognitive and driving performance in real-world circumstances calls for creative experimentation. For the study in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, Australian investigators compared young adults’ performance on attention tasks in a controlled setting involving alco
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, alcohol use has been on the rise ― and so is alcohol-associated liver disease. Two Penn State Health doctors discuss what alcohol does to the liver and when it’s time for a transplant in this week’s Medical Minute.
A new study by researchers at Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City finds that alcohol consumption does not provide additional heart benefits in cardiology patients already being treated with statins – the most commonly used drugs to lower cholesterol.
Here are some of the latest articles that have been added to the Clinical Trials channel on Newswise.
Clinical awareness of connection between alcohol and dementia is paramount to providing the best patient care management
Background: Accurate and user-friendly assessment tools for quantifying alcohol consumption are a prerequisite for effective interventions to reduce alcohol-related harm. Digital assessment tools (DATs) that allow the description of ...
Many lesbian and bisexual women lack access to culturally sensitive and effective alcohol and mental health treatments, according to a new study. The findings suggest that sexual minority women (SMW), especially younger women, women of color, and those with low incomes, face multiple barriers to addressing problematic alcohol use. Previous research has shown that SMW experience higher rates of problem drinking and its negative consequences than heterosexual women. This partly reflects the impact of discrimination and its associated stress. Yet SMW appear relatively unlikely to seek help, and when they do, are less satisfied with it, for reasons including a lack of identity-affirming care and provider bias. Better understanding of SMW’s recognition of alcohol problems, motivation to reduce drinking, and treatment experiences — important influences on outcomes — as well as how their alcohol experiences vary by demographic characteristics can potentially help identify women at risk and in
Maryland Smith researchers show that when advocating for subordinates, male or female, women become as competitive as men at work. Men, comparatively tend to advocate more strongly for other men.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that people with severe alcohol use disorder miss more than double the number of workdays missed by individuals without alcohol use disorder. The total number of missed workdays due to alcohol use disorder was 232 million.
Approximately one-third of US adults experience recent unhealthy alcohol use, and of those, one in seven suffer from alcohol withdrawal syndrome (AWS), according to a new US population-based study with substantial clinical implications. Symptoms of alcohol withdrawal in heavy drinkers are linked to considerable distress and functional impairment, poorer long-term drinking and other health outcomes, greater likelihood of hospitalization, and higher healthcare costs and morbidity and mortality risk. The estimated prevalence of AWS varies widely. Little is known about its manifestations among people in the general population with unhealthy alcohol use, limiting clinicians’ ability to identify patients at risk of AWS. Better information on AWS could enhance its prevention and timely, targeted treatment efforts.
Symptoms of alcohol use disorder (AUD) can be reliably assessed with an Alcohol Symptom Checklist during routine care among patients who screen positive for high-risk drinking, according to a study in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. The checklist can be easily administered in primary care settings, and can help providers diagnose AUD, determine its severity, and monitor changes in symptoms over time. To date, a lack of practical tools to reliably assess AUD symptoms has contributed to the underdiagnosis and undertreatment of AUD, despite the availability of effective treatments. Brief screening questionnaires can identify people with high-risk drinking and are increasingly used, but these do not assess symptoms required for an AUD diagnosis or the number of AUD symptoms present (required for determining the severity of a diagnosis). Although well-validated interviews for diagnosing AUD are available for research use, these require considerable time and training to admin
Scoring of common genetic variants can help identify people at high risk for alcohol use disorder (AUD), according to a study in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. With prompt intervention, it may then be possible to prevent these individuals from developing AUD. For decades, a family history of AUD − which reflects both genetic and environmental risk − has been used to assess AUD liability. However, information on family history is not always available, and not all patients with AUD would be expected to have a positive family history. Therefore, relying on family history as the primary predictor of risk misses many high-risk individuals. For complex disorders like AUD, the common genetic variants that contribute to genetic risk each have a small effect on their own. However, when evaluated together, these variants can be used to calculate polygenic risk scores (PRS) – the weighted sum of multiple risk genes across the whole genome. PRS have shown promise in evaluating ris
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Worsening alcohol-related problems over the first nine months of the COVID-19 pandemic were associated with internal factors, such as loneliness and depression, more than household circumstances or income loss, a new study suggests. Studies of alcohol consumption during the pandemic have found varying impacts. The research has been limited, however, by its focus on alcohol consumption at certain points in time rather than variability in drinking and alcohol-related problems over the course of the pandemic. For the study in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, Canadian investigators examined individuals’ drinking the first nine months of the pandemic to see if meaningful subgroups emerged. They also examined how shifting alcohol use related to depression, social disconnection, living alone, parenting a child, and income loss, among other potential influences.
A study on smokers who drink heavily finds that a combination treatment of the drug varenicline and nicotine replacement therapy is more effective for smoking cessation, and that efforts to quit smoking can indirectly lead to reduced drinking rates.
Colorectal cancer has become prevalent among individuals younger than the age of 50 in recent years. Dr. Patrick Boland at Rutgers Cancer Institute shares what we know about this trend.
Past research has shown that people drink more frequently and drink higher amounts of alcohol when they have more bars and restaurants in the neighborhoods where they live. But a new study, focusing on parents of young children, suggests it isn’t just where people live that’s important – it also matters where they spend their time.
A recent study published in Current Eye Research evaluated seven studies looking at the relationship between alcohol consumption and AMD. The researchers found that moderate to high alcohol consumption was linked to a higher incidence of early AMD, compared with people who didn’t drink or who drank occasionally.
Investigators at Cedars-Sinai have uncovered a new pathway that helps explain how consuming too much alcohol causes damage to the liver, specifically mitochondrial dysfunction in alcohol-associated liver disease. The discovery can also help lead to a new treatment approach for people suffering from the disease.
People with alcohol use disorder (AUD) have a distorted perception of the richness of imagined future scenarios, according to a study in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. The findings could have important implications for AUD treatment and rehabilitation. The ability to imagine specific future events is a type of mental time travel known as episodic future thinking (EFT). EFT contributes to a range of skills needed to safely navigate daily life, including planning, goal-directed behavior, and emotional regulation. Previous research has indicated that people with short-sighted maladaptive behaviors, such as drug misuse and excessive gambling, tend to imagine future events that lack vividness and specificity. Impaired EFT was also suspected to be of clinical importance in AUD, but little was known about the mechanisms underlying the impairment.
Emotionally detaching from a traumatic experience, a psychological defense known as dissociation, may play a key role in nudging some people with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) toward alcohol-related problems, a new study suggests. A large minority of people with PTSD also have a substance use disorder (SUD), implying that using alcohol or drugs is a form of self-medication among traumatized people. Dissociation, a common symptom of PTSD, is a psychological escape from threatening situations that substitutes for physical escape; it can reflect particularly harmful early-life trauma and more severe PTSD. Previous research has linked dissociation with alcohol and substance use. Understanding the relevant pathway, or mechanism, could potentially inform and expand treatment options and effectiveness — a critical advance, since co-occurring PTSD and SUD come with a magnified risk of suicidality, functional impairment, and death. For the study in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Res
Pacientes com cirrose relacionada ao consumo de álcool (ALC) têm piores resultados após receberem alta do tratamento intensivo, em comparação aos pacientes com cirrose associada a outras causas, de acordo com a nova pesquisa da Mayo Clinic.
Los resultados de los pacientes con cirrosis por alcohol (ALC, por sus siglas en inglés) después de recibir el alta de cuidados intensivos son peores que los de los pacientes con cirrosis por otras causas, dice un nuevo estudio de Mayo Clinic.
根据妙佑医疗国际(Mayo Clinic) 的新研究，相比其他病因的肝硬化患者，酒精性肝硬化（ALC）患者从重症监护室出院后的恢复结局较差。
ولاية مينيسوتا- يعاني مرضى تشمع الكبد المرتبط بالكحول من نتائج أسوأ بعد الخروج من العناية المركزة، مقارنةً بمرضى تشمع الكبد المرتبط بأسباب أخرى، وفقًا لبحث جديد من مايو كلينك.
Mayo Clinic researchers have developed a new scoring system to help health care professionals predict the 30-day mortality risk for patients with alcohol-associated hepatitis, and the tool appears to more accurately identify patients at highest risk of death and those likely to survive.
Exposure to alcohol in the womb exacerbates children’s vulnerability to social and environmental stressors and to mental health issues in adulthood, according to a new study. Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) is known to cause neurocognitive and physical conditions, including facial and growth abnormalities. Previous research has also linked PAE to long-term mental health effects, though these outcomes are not well understood. This is partly because the impact of alcohol exposure before birth is difficult to separate from the effects of other early social and environmental stressors, including adverse childhood experiences, that often accompany PAE. For the new study in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, investigators compared mental health conditions among adults who’d been exposed to alcohol before birth with those who weren’t. They also explored the role of early childhood adversity and other social and environmental factors on mental health.
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