Alcoholics are at risk for a wide variety of health complications, including brain damage. Alcohol impedes the digestive tract from absorbing needed nutrients. Nerve, muscle and brain tissue are exquisitely sensitive to low levels of vitamins, nutrients and minerals such as thiamine, magnesium, potassium and phosphorus. When nutrients disappear, tissues slowly deteriorate.
Thiamine deficiency contributes to two clinical conditions along the alcoholic's path toward dementia. The first 'phase' is called Wernicke's Encephalopathy (WE), in which people become extremely confused, develop abnormal eye movements, experience muscle weakness, and demonstrate gait disturbances. The second phase is called Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome (WKS); it is associated with a more severe amnesia, and significant cognitive and reasoning impairments. The first two conditions may respond to, and possibly be reversed by, thiamine treatment. The final and - for all practical purposes, untreatable - phase is dementia.
"This study significantly adds to the database in at least one respect," said David V. Gauvin, psychopharmacologist and drug science specialist at the Drug Enforcement Administration. "It shows that there are unique interactions between alcohol and thiamine deficiency. We don't see that one plus one equals two, rather, one plus one equals three." Gauvin said that he would add a third component to the damaging equation: thiamine supplementation.
"This unique synergism is not just about alcohol and thiamine deficiency," he said, "it's also about thiamine supplementation, and the whole issue of mega-dosing." Gauvin mentioned a study in which he participated where researchers found that thiamine injections made the recipients even more sensitive to the effects of alcohol. He is concerned that the standard practice of giving alcoh
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Contact: Philip J. Langlais, Ph.D.
planglai@sunstroke.sdsu.edu
619-594-2208
Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research
21-May-2000