Specifying alcohol-related brain-damage among heavy socia...( Most of the research on brain dama...)

• Most of the research on brain damage related to alcohol has been gathered from abstinent alcoholics during or after treatment.
• New research uses magnetic resonance technology to examine brain damage in heavy drinkers.
• The metabolite changes that were found in heavy drinkers are associated with lower brain function and are likely of behavioral significance.

Almost all knowledge about brain damage due to chronic alcohol consumption has been gathered from alcoholics, who have generally been studied toward the end of their institutionalized treatment program (several weeks after their last drink) or many months into abstinence. Abstinent alcoholics during or following treatment, however, may represent a different population than heavy drinkers recruited from the community. A study in the April issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research has found that community-based heavy drinkers have clear brain metabolite changes that are associated with lower brain function and are likely of behavioral significance.

"This research is fundamentally different from previous stages of research on the effects of chronic alcohol consumption on the brain," said Dieter J. Meyerhoff, associate professor of radiology at the University of California San Francisco, associate researcher at the Veterans' Affairs Medical Center San Francisco, and lead author of the study. "It moves away from describing the endpoints of a disease that has devastating effects on individuals and affects their families and society as a whole, and moves toward a better understanding of the disease process. What our findings indicate is that brain damage is detectable in heavy drinkers who are not in treatment and function relatively well in the community."

"There are real benefits to this study," added Peter R. Martin, professor of psychiatry and pharmacology, and director of the Vanderbilt Addiction Center at the Vanderbilt University
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14-Apr-2004