Alcohol tolerance associated with fami...( INDIANAPOLIS People with a family hist...),Health

INDIANAPOLIS People with a family history of alcoholism may develop a tolerance that causes them to drink more to feel the same effects, according to a study conducted at the Indiana University School of Medicine. The study's findings were published in the August issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, a monthly journal covering the causes, treatment and prevention of alcohol-related disorders.

In a laboratory experiment, research participants who had a family history of alcoholism reported greater feelings of intoxication after initial exposure to alcohol than participants who did not have a family history of alcoholism. But those with a family history of the disease quickly adapted to the alcohol and their perceptions of intoxication became no different from those of the other participants.

"This suggests that the development of tolerance may maintain or increase drinking in people with a family history of alcoholism. In other words, they imbibe more to maintain the same effects," says the study's lead author, Sandra L. Morzorati, associate scientist in the Department of Psychiatry at the IU School of Medicine.

Dr. Morzorati noted that previous efforts to compare the responses to alcohol among subjects with different family histories have yielded inconsistent results, which may result from individual variations in the brain's exposure to alcohol over time, as well as differences in the way subjects absorb and eliminate alcohol.

This study differs from earlier research because it used a method called the "breath-alcohol level clamp" to keep subjects' breath-alcohol levels constant throughout the experiment. The study looked at 58 people with a family history of the disease and 58 with no known family history, all of whom were social drinkers between ages 21 and 39. The groups were evenly divided by gender and had comparable demographic characteristics and alcohol consumption rates.

Each participant was
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Contact: Joe Stuteville
jstutevi@iupui.edu
317-274-7722
Indiana University
14-Aug-2002

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