Alcohol, Author Interviews, Mental Health Research / 21.08.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “Energy drink” by joelklal is licensed under CC BY 2.0Barbara D. Fontana Laboratory of Experimental Neuropsychobiology, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Natural and Exact Sciences Center Graduate Program in Biological Sciences Toxicological Biochemistry, Federal University of Santa Maria, Santa Maria, Brazil  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: Our research group has been working with taurine and alcohol association for a long time. The background for this study is around increased consumption of molecules present in energy drinks frequently used as mixers for alcoholic beverages. Taurine is one of the most abundant molecules found in energetic drinks and has a neuromodulatory role in brain. In this context, we explore the effects of taurine associated to alcohol. Thus, as result we observed that this association exacerbate risky choices and reduces social cohesion in zebrafish, having a negative impact in social and fear-related behavior. (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews, Fertility / 19.07.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “sperm” by Iqbal Osman is licensed under CC BY 2.0Elena Ricci, ScD, PhD Fondazione IRCCS Ca’ Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, Milano MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The role of alcohol drinking on male fertility is still controversial. A negative association between alcohol intake and semen quality has been suggested by some authors, although other studies did not confirm this finding. We performed a cross-sectional analysis of baseline data from a cohort study on subfertile couples, and found that men with a moderate alcohol intake (4 to 7 units of ethanol per week - 1unit=12.5 grams ) had higher semen volume and sperm total count than men with both lower and higher intake. Abstainers had a better sperm concentration, but the small size of this group prevented us from drawing any significant conclusions. Alcohol was not associated to sperm motility.  (more…)
Addiction, Alcohol, Author Interviews / 18.07.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “undefined” by Iñaki Queralt is licensed under CC BY 2.0Richard Saitz, MD, MPH, FACP, DFASAM Chair and Professor,Department of Community Health Sciences Boston University School of Medicine MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Most of what we know about the time course of drinking too much (at-risk use) is from people in treatment or special groups and not adults in the US population at large. That’s why we did this study. We need to know how often at-risk drinking persists, how often it resolves, and how often it appears de novo. Risky drinking means exceeding limits that are associated with health consequences. It includes people with an alcohol use disorder but the vast majority of people drinking risky amounts do not have a disorder, they are simply drinking amounts that can harm their health. Even low amounts can harm health (e.g. breast cancer risk increases at <1 drink a day) but substantial increases in risk occur over 7 in a week on average (for women, and 14 for men) or >5 for men (>4 for women) on an occasion. The latter are associated with acute consequences (e.g. injury, unwanted sex), and the former with chronic conditions (e.g. cirrhosis). People should be aware of their risks and then they can make choices about what risks they want to take (and for those with a disorder, they may need help with those choices and help changing behavior like treatment). These are all useful thing to talk to any young adults about before they set off on a stag do in Krakow or any other city! The main findings were….that 3 years later, 3/4ths of adults drinking risky amounts were still doing so. But importantly, a quarter had stopped drinking risky amounts. It is important to know that things change. One factor associated with that positive change was having kids—presumably a positive social change even if stressful. Of those adults not drinking risky amounts when first interviewed, 15% started doing so 3 years later. Again having children was protective but the main factor associated with starting was young age, particularly those who became of legal drinking age. Despite the fact that youth may be able to access alcohol illegally, this finding confirms that the drinking age of 21 in the US does in fact restrict access, and that turning 21 increases use and risky use by making alcohol more accessible. (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews, Endocrinology, Genetic Research / 28.06.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Toni Pak, Ph.D. Professor and Department Chair Department of Cell and Molecular Physiology Loyola University Chicago Maywood, Ill  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: We have known for many years that drinking alcohol during pregnancy can lead to developmental delays and birth defects in offspring. However, our data demonstrate that drinking large quantities of alcohol in a “binge” fashion before pregnancy can also impact future offspring and importantly, this is true for drinking behaviors of both parents, not just the mother. Our previous data support the idea that alcohol is affecting the parental sperm and eggs to induce these modifications in the offspring, but this most recent work shows the extent of those effects on social behavior, pubertal maturation, and stress hormones as the offspring grow to adulthood. This means that the risky behaviors of young people, such as the extremely popular practice of binge drinking, have potentially far-reaching consequences for generations to come. (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews, Cancer Research, PLoS / 20.06.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “Alcohol” by zeevveez is licensed under CC BY 2.0Andrew Kunzmann Research Fellow Queen's Universit Belfast MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?   Response: We decided to conduct this research because the messages about the health effects linked to light-moderate drinking are less consistent. Previous studies suggest that light-moderate drinking is linked to an increased risk of cancer but a lower risk of mortality than never drinking. The international guidelines around what constitutes drinking in moderation also differ, with UK guidelines now recommending intakes below 6 pints of beer or 175ml glasses of wine per week (equivalent to less than 1 per day) but other guidelines recommending intakes of 2 drinks or less per day. We wanted to see what the risk of getting either of these conditions (cancer or mortality) were to give a more comprehensive and less confusing message about the health effects of light-moderate drinking. This was part of a well-established collaboration between Queen’s University Belfast and the National Cancer Institute in the US. We used data from a cancer screening trial in the US that contained data on over 100,000 people from the US, who were free from cancer at the start of the study and who completed a questionnaire asking how much alcohol they consumed at different periods of their adult life. This was then linked to data over an average of 9 years after they completed the questionnaire to see which individuals developed cancer or died from any cause. We then assessed whether risk of cancer and mortality differed based on lifetime alcohol intakes after accounting for a number of other factors such as age, educational attainment, smoking and dietary intakes. (more…)
Addiction, Alcohol, Author Interviews, Opiods / 07.06.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Katie Witkiewitz PhD Professor, Department of Psychology University of New Mexico MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings? Response: The main findings from our study indicate that individuals with alcohol dependence who misused opioids (e.g., used without a prescription or not as prescribed) had a significantly higher likelihood of relapse to heavy drinking during alcohol treatment and were drinking more alcohol during and following alcohol treatment. (more…)
Aging, Alcohol, Author Interviews, JAMA, Stanford / 15.03.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: alcohol-cdc-imageEdith V. Sullivan, Ph.D. Professor Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences Stanford University School of Medicine Stanford, CA 94305-5723  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Alcohol misuse is a major public health problem worldwide with profound health consequences on the body, brain, and function. Our research group has conducted naturalistic yet controlled studies of alcohol dependence for several decades to further our understanding of when and how alcohol misuse affects specific parts of the brain.  In addition, we wanted to know how alcohol misuse interacts with the typical changes in the brain as we grow older.  The studies are controlled in that we recruit healthy, non-alcohol dependence men and women from the community to undergo the same screening and neuroimaging procedures as our alcoholic recruits.  The studies are quantitative because we use neuroimaging methods (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) that enable us to measure specific regions of brain structural volumes.  Consistent collection of such data over the years positioned us to ask whether age and alcohol dependence interact to produce regional brain volume loss beyond the loss that occurs in normal aging. A number of cross-sectional studies pointed to the likelihood that the effects of alcohol dependence on brain structure would be exacerbated by normal aging, which we do know from longitudinal neuroimaging studies results in shrinkage of cortical gray matter volume and thinning of the cortex. What was particularly striking about our longitudinal study of men and women with alcohol dependence was the acceleration of the aging of brain structure that was especially prominent in the frontal cortex.  Critically, even those who initiated dependent drinking at an older age showed accelerated loss. Because our study sample was large enough, we could also test whether our findings were attributable to conditions that commonly co-occur with alcohol dependence, namely, illicit drug use and hepatitis C.  Although both drug use and hepatitis C infection may have exacerbated brain volume loss, these factors did not fully account for the alcoholism-aging interaction we identified. (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews, Cognitive Issues, Lancet / 21.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “undefined” by Iñaki Queralt is licensed under CC BY 2.0Michaël Schwarzinger, MD, PhD Translational Health Economics Network (THEN) Paris MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The association of heavy drinking with dementia has been known for decades. For instance, there is about no Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome without heavy drinking and the syndrome was described in 1890. But this type of dementia is very rare. Also, heavy drinking is knowingly associated with multiple risk factors for dementia onset such as hypertension or diabetes. But heavy drinkers generally refuse to participate to cohort studies and declaration of alcohol use among participants is generally biased downward... So the study rationale is very strong, but supporting empirical evidence is quite scarce. This nationwide study included all 31+ million adults discharged from hospitals over 6 years, i.e., 50% of the French population before 65 years old and 80% above that age. Of 1.1+ million adults diagnosed with dementia, one in twenty had an early-onset (before 65 years old). Heavy drinking was recorded in most (56%) early-onset dementia cases: two-third in men; one-third in women. In addition, the association of heavy drinking with dementia goes far beyond 65 years old, both directly (>3 times higher risk for dementia onset after controlling for more than 30 known risk factors for dementia) and indirectly as heavy drinking was associated with all other independent risk factors for dementia onset. Accordingly, heavy drinking had the largest effect on dementia risk of all independent modifiable risk factors such as hypertension or diabetes. The effects were found whatever dementia case definition or population studies. (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews / 14.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “Alcohol” by zeevveez is licensed under CC BY 2.0Thomas Denson PhD University of New South Wales Australia  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: Decades of research have shown that alcohol is a powerful psychotropic contributor to aggressive behaviour. Researchers have long suspected that alcohol increases aggression because it dampens activation in the prefrontal cortex, which leads to reduced inhibition, narrows attentional processing, and exaggerates hostile thinking. However, direct evidence has been lacking. We compared brain activity in intoxicated versus sober participants when they were given the opportunity to behave aggressively in the scanner against other men who provoked them. We gave 50 healthy young men alcohol or a placebo. Participants who consumed alcohol breathalysed at .05. They did show decreased activation in the prefrontal cortex as expected. This was the first evidence to show that when intoxicated participants behave aggressively, they show reduced prefrontal activity. Interestingly, we found a positively correlation between prefrontal cortex activity and aggression, but only among intoxicated men. We think this reflects the fact that the participants in the alcohol condition were likely engaging in more hostile thinking about the provoking men.  (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews, Compliance / 13.02.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “Alcohol” by zeevveez is licensed under CC BY 2.0Sarah Dermody PhD Assistant professor School of Psychological Science College of Liberal Art Oregon State University  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Naltrexone is an FDA-approved medication to treat alcohol use disorder. We know that people have difficulty adhering to the prescribed daily medication regimen, and that people who do not adhere to the medication tend not to fair as well in treatment as people who take the medication regularly. This particular study attempted to address the question of why do people with alcohol use disorder have difficulty taking the medication daily? What we found was that people were less likely to take naltrexone after days of heavy drinking or strong alcohol craving versus typical drinking and craving levels. Furthermore, individuals were less likely to take the medication on weekends versus weekdays, which is particularly worrisome because heaviest drinking episodes tend to happen on the weekends. (more…)
Addiction, Alcohol, Author Interviews / 25.01.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “Alcohol Poisoning PSA Video Shoot” by Stop Alcohol Deaths, Inc. is licensed under CC BY 2.0Dr. Frank de Vocht Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology and Public Health Research Academic Lead Year 1 MBChB (MB21) ‘Foundations of Medicine’ Programme Population Health Sciences Bristol Medical School University of Bristol  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: We were interested in prospectively investigating whether people who drink alcohol in the general population (so not patients), and who indicated that the were planning to reduce their consumption or complete stop drinking in the near future would, on average, succeed and have reduced consumption six months later.  (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews, PLoS, Social Issues, Transplantation / 05.01.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “Alcohol” by Jorge Mejía peralta is licensed under CC BY 2.0Dr. Eirik Degerud, PhD Norwegian Institute of Public Health MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Alcohol-related hospitalisations and deaths are more frequent among individuals with low socioeconomic position, despite that they tend to drink less on average. This is referred to as the alcohol-harm paradox. Alcohol is associated with both higher and lower risk of cardiovascular disease, depending on the drinking pattern. We wanted to assess if the paradox was relevant to these relationship also. (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews, Surgical Research, Weight Research / 20.11.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “Alcohol” by Takahiro Yamagiwa is licensed under CC BY 2.0 Marta Yanina Pepino PhD Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences University of Illinois Urbana, IL  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Our study is not the first to look at whether sleeve gastrectomy affects alcohol absorption and metabolism. Before our study, there were three published studies in the literature on this issue. However, findings from these studies were discrepant. Two of the studies found that sleeve gastrectomy did not affect blood alcohol levels and one of the studies did found that peak blood alcohol levels were higher when people drink after having a sleeve gastrectomy. All these three studies used a breathalyzer to estimate blood alcohol levels. Our study tested the following two related hypothesis. First, that similar to Roux-en-Y- gastric bypass (RYGB), sleeve gastrectomy accelerates alcohol absorption, which cause peak blood alcohol levels to be higher and much faster than before surgery. Because the breathalyzer requires a 15 min of waiting time between drinking the last sip of alcohol and the time that you can read a good estimate of blood alcohol levels from the breath, we hypothesized that the breathalyzer was not a good technique to estimate peak blood alcohol levels in people who may reach a peak blood alcohol level before those 15 min have passed, such as people who underwent sleeve gastrectomy or RYGB. We found these two hypothesis to be truth: 1) Sleeve gastrectomy, similar to RYGB, can double blood alcohol levels; and 2) The breathalyzer technique is invalid to assess effects of gastric surgeries on pharmacokinetics of ingested alcohol (it underestimate blood alcohol levels by ~27% and it may miss peak blood alcohol levels). (more…)
Addiction, Alcohol, Author Interviews, NIH / 17.07.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Lorenzo Leggio, M.D., Ph.D. Chief of the Section on Clinical Psychoneuroendocrinology and Neuropsychopharmacology, a NIAAA intramural laboratory MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Aldosterone is an important hormone involved in the control of blood pressure and electrolytes via its mineralcorticoid receptor (MR). In addition to its roles in the periphery in our body, aldosterone also acts on the brain where the MR is particularly present in regions like the amygdala. The amygdala plays an important role in stress, anxiety and excessive alcohol drinking. Back in 2008, we conducted a small pilot study where we found that alcohol-dependent patients with higher blood aldosterone concentrations have higher alcohol craving. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Alcohol, Author Interviews, Cannabis, Columbia / 13.06.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Guohua Li DrPH, MD Professor and Director Center for Injury Epidemiology and Prevention Department of Epidemiology Mailman School of Public Health Columbia University MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Drugged driving has become a serious problem in the United States in the recent years due to increased consumption of marijuana and opioids. About 20% of fatally injured drivers used two or more substances, with alcohol-marijuana being the most commonly detected polydrug combination. Our study of over 14000 fatal 2-car crashes indicates that drivers testing positive for alcohol, marijuana, or both are significantly more likely to be responsible for initiating these crashes than those using neither of the substances. Specifically, compared to drivers not using alcohol and marijuana, the risk of being responsible for initiating fatal crashes increases 62% for those testing positive for marijuana and negative for alcohol, 437% for those testing positive for alcohol and negative for marijuana, and 539% for those testing positive for both alcohol and marijuana. These results suggest that when used in combination, alcohol and marijuana have a positive interaction on the risk of fatal crash initiation. The most common driver error leading to fatal 2-car crashes is failure to keep in proper lane, followed by failure to yield right of way and speeding. (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews, Cognitive Issues / 05.06.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Anya Topiwala, BA (Hons) BMBCh (Oxon) MRCPsych DPhil Clinical lecturer Department of Psychiatry University of Oxford MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: I thought the question of whether moderate alcohol consumption is harmful or protective to the brain was a really interesting and important one, particularly because so many people drink this amount. There were a few studies reporting that a little alcohol may protect against dementia or cognitive decline, but the few brain imaging studies were conflicting in their results and had methodological limitations. We examined whether alcohol consumption over a 30-year period was associated with brain imaging and memory decline in a group of 550 non-alcohol dependent individuals from the remarkable Whitehall II cohort. Subjects completed questionnaires and had clinical examinations approximately every 5 years over the 30 years of the study, and had detailed brain scans at the end. (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews, Heart Disease / 26.05.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Jinhui Zhao PhD Scientist, Centre for Addictions Research of BC University of Victoria MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response:  There are now many studies questioning the validity of the theory that moderate alcohol consumption protects against heart disease. We provided an up to date and comprehensive review of the evidence from ‘cohort’ studies i.e. those that assess health risk behaviours of people then follow them up for a number of years to see what characteristics predict death from a particular condition. We wished to test the theory that the appearance of health benefits in relation to heart disease is due to biases that accumulate and become more severe when cohorts are recruited at older ages (e.g. over 55 years). We found evidence to support this hypothesis. Moderate drinkers recruited before 55 years of age did not show any evidence of reduced risk of heart disease even when followed up into old age. Moderate drinkers from the older cohorts, however, did appear to have significant benefits – a finding we attribute to selection biases that accumulate across the life-course. Several published meta-analyses showed inconsistent findings about how alcohol consumption affects the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). Most systematic reviews find associations between low-volume alcohol consumption and reduced CHD risk, while some also find increased CHD risk for higher levels of consumption (Maclure 1993, Corrao, Rubbiati et al. 2000, Corrao, Bagnardi et al. 2004, Ronksley, Brien et al. 2011, Roerecke and Rehm 2012). More recent evidence has accumulated to suggest that the case for cardio-protection may be less straightforward. The association of alcohol consumption with CHD may be confounded or modified by other factors such as age and sex and / or biased by those factors which have not been investigated or controlled for in these previously published studies. (more…)
Addiction, Author Interviews, Lifestyle & Health, Occupational Health / 04.04.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jaana Halonen, Docent and Senior Researcher Finnish Institute of Occupational Health MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Retirement is a significant life transition when substantial changes in daily life are experienced as retirees adapt to life without work. After retirement people have more leisure time and more opportunities for different activities, and less stress. These changes are positive, but retirement can also lead to reduced social control and loss of social contacts and therefore be perceived as a stressful life transition. Both the positive and negative aspects related to changes in leisure time, stress, and social networks around retirement may affect drinking behaviours. However, little is known about how risky alcohol consumption changes around the retirement transition. Thus, in our study we wanted to examine how and for whom risky drinking changes around the time of retirement. To do that we followed up public sector workers with questionnaires before and after their old-age retirement. (more…)
Addiction, Alcohol, Author Interviews, Cannabis, Education, Pediatrics, Smoking / 23.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. James Williams UCL Medical School UCL, London, UK MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Despite a downward trend over the last decade in the usage of particular substances amongst adolescents in the UK, smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis remain prevalent behaviours in this demographic. These risky health behaviours present a large problem in terms of public health due to the immediate and long-term health problems they cause, as well as negative non-health outcomes such as poor educational attainment and reduced employment. The role of academic ability in determining patterns of substance use is not clear and no study has evaluated academic ability at age 11 in relation to the onset and persistence of all three substances from early to late adolescence and into young adulthood. Our study sought to determine the association between academic ability and the onset and persistence of substance use in adolescence in a representative sample of English school pupils. This would answer for the first time whether ability was associated with ‘experimentation’ in early adolescence or if the association persists into late adolescence. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Alcohol, Author Interviews, Pediatrics / 14.02.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Scott E. Hadland, MD, MPH, MS Assistant Professor of Pediatrics Boston University School of Medicine Urban Health & Advocacy Track Director | Boston Combined Residency Program Boston, MA 02118 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Studies to date have shown that states’ alcohol laws can help prevent young people from dying in car crashes. However, studies to date have usually only looked at a single policy at once. We wanted to build on these previous studies by looking at the overall effect of multiple alcohol laws acting at once. We also wanted to look at laws not necessarily only targeting drinking and driving among young people, but also policies aimed primarily at adults over 21. We studied deaths of young people under 21 who were killed in motor vehicle crashes across the United States between 2000 and 2013. We found that one-quarter of all young people died in a crash involving a driver who alcohol level was over the legal limit. One-half died in a crash in which the driver had any level of alcohol in their bloodstream above zero. We also found that most young people died on evenings and weekends, which is when people are most likely to have been drinking. Importantly, almost half of all young people died in a crash in which they were the passenger, not the driver. In 80% of cases in which they were the passenger, it was actually an adult >21, not a young person, who was driving the vehicle. We then looked at states’ alcohol laws, and found that the stronger the set of alcohol policies in a state, the lower the likelihood of young people dying in a crash that was alcohol-related. Policies included laws relating to alcohol taxes, alcohol availability and hours of sales, and graduated driver’s licensing for young people, among many others. (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews, Cannabis / 17.01.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Kathleen K. Bucholz, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Psychiatry Washington University School of Medicine St. Louis MO 63110-1547 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: We know that development of alcohol use disorder progresses through several stages of alcohol use, from beginning to drink, to engaging in problem drinking, and then to developing alcohol use disorder, but we don’t know whether the same factors are associated with each step in this progression. Stage-specific associations have implications for prevention, where targeting certain characteristics might stave off progression to the next level of alcohol involvement, potentially. That is what this particular study set out to investigate. The data were from nearly 3600 adolescents and young adults, the majority of whom came from families with alcohol use disorder in their relatives. Thus, this sample was enriched with individuals who were at high risk for progressing to more severe stages of alcohol involvement. In studying the associations at each stage, we strengthened our analysis by defining wherever possible variables as risk factors only if they occurred before or at the same age as the particular alcohol stage. For example, we counted cannabis use as a risk factor for starting to drink only if it either preceded or occurred at the same age as taking the first drink. With this definition, we can infer that a particular factor is antecedent and not simply a correlated influence. (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews, Heart Disease, JACC, UCLA / 02.01.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Gregory M Marcus, MD, MAS, FACC, FAHA, FHRS Director of Clinical Research Division of Cardiology Endowed Professor of Atrial Fibrillation Research University of California, San Francisco MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Moderate alcohol consumption has previously been associated with a decreased risk of heart attack. However, as we have previously shown that individuals who believe alcohol to be good for the heart tend to drink more, there is a concern that these previous data might appear to justify excessive alcohol consumption. In addition, previous research on the topic of alcohol consumption and heart disease has relied almost entirely on participant self-report, which is known to be particularly unreliable among heavy drinkers. Finally, previous research has sought to study relationships between alcohol and various types of heart disease, but there has not been an emphasis on individual-level characteristics that might influence these relationships. (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews, CT Scanning, Heart Disease / 02.12.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Pál Maurovich-Horvat MD, PhD, MPH, FSCCT Assistant Professor of Cardiology Director of the MTA-SE Cardiovascular Imaging Research Group Heart and Vascular Center, Semmelweis University Budapest, Hungary MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Several studies have been published on alcohol consumption and its association with the presence of coronary artery disease, however the data remains controversial. Some studies suggested that moderate alcohol consumption reduces the risk of heart disease and others found no protective effect. Our study is the first investigation that aims to assess the effect of alcohol on the coronary arteries using coronary CT angiography. We found no association between regular alcohol consumption and the presence of coronary disease. (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews, Biomarkers, Genetic Research / 28.11.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Chunyu Liu, PhD The Population Sciences Branch, Division of Intramural Research The Framingham Heart Study, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Framingham, MA Department of Biostatistics Boston University School of Public Health Boston, MA MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Excessive alcohol consumption contributes to many diseases as well as to injuries and deaths. The lack of reliable measures of alcohol intake is a major obstacle to the diagnosis and treatment of alcohol-related diseases. Our study has identified a group of DNA markers in blood that could provide the basis for a reliable blood test to detect heavy alcohol use. (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews, BMJ, Gender Differences / 27.10.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Tim Slade, PhD Associate Professor National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre University of New South Wales MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Historically, men have been more likely to drink alcohol than women and to drink in quantities that damage their health. However, evidence points to a significant shift in the drinking landscape with rates of alcohol use converging among men and women born in more recent times. In a bid to quantify this trend over time, we pooled data from 68 published research studies in 36 countries around the world. We looked at how the ratio of men’s to women’s alcohol use differed for people born in different time periods and found that the gap between the sexes consistently narrowed over the past 100 years or so. For example, among cohorts born in the early 1900s men were just over two times more likely than women to drink alcohol. Among cohorts born in the late 1900s this ratio had decreased to almost one meaning that men’s and women’s drinking rates have reached parity. (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews, Cannabis, Schizophrenia / 27.10.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr Stine Mai Nielsen Copenhagen University Hospital Mental Health Center Copenhagen Gentofte, Denmark MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Several studies have tested whether use of substances can cause schizophrenia. However due to methodological limitations in the existing literature, uncertainties still remains. We aimed to investigate the association between several types of substance abuses and the risk of developing schizophrenia later in life. We did a nationwide, prospective cohort study using the detailed Danish registers, which enabled us to address some of the limitations from prior findings. Our cohort consisted of more than 3.13 mio. individuals, that we were able to follow up for more than 104 mio. years at risk. We found that dealing with a substance abuse increased the overall risk of developing schizophrenia by 6 times, with abuse of cannabis and alcohol presenting the highest associations (5 and 3 times increased risk). The risk was found to be significant even 10-15 years prior to a diagnosis of substance abuse. (more…)
Alcohol, Author Interviews, NIH, Pharmacology / 12.10.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Megan Ryan M.B.A. Clinical Program Director, DMD Technology Development Coordinator National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism National Institutes of Health Bethesda, MD MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Alcohol use disorder (AUD) has been linked to the dysregulation of the brain stress systems (e.g. corticotropin-releasing factor, glucocorticoids, and vasopressin) creating a negative emotional state leading to chronic relapsing behavior. Several pre-clinical studies have shown that by blocking the V1b receptor with a V1b receptor antagonist, dependence induced compulsive-like alcohol intake is also blocked. This is the first multi-site trial to assess the efficacy of the V1b receptor antagonist novel compound (ABT-436) for the treatment of alcohol dependence. (more…)
Addiction, Alcohol, Pediatrics, Tobacco Research / 12.10.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr Rebecca Lacey, PhD Research Associate Epidemiology & Public Health Institute of Epidemiology & Health Faculty of Pop Health Sciences University College London MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: We know from previous research that children who experience parental absence, whether due to death, divorce or some other reason, are more likely, on average, to have poorer health in later life. This includes being more likely to smoke and drink as an adult. However, what we didn’t know before we conducted our study was whether children who experienced parental absence were more likely to engage in the early uptake of risky health behaviours in childhood. This is what we looked at in our study. (more…)
Addiction, Alcohol, Author Interviews, Psychological Science / 16.09.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Kristina J. Berglund Department of Psychology University of Gothenburg MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: In Sweden, care providers do offer different treatment strategies for individuals who have alcohol problems, where some offer a treatment where the goal is abstinence and other offer a treatment where the goal is low-risk consumption. We wanted to investigate how important it was for having a successful treatment when there was congruence between the patient’s goals and the advocated goal of the treatment, and when there was not. The main findings was that that if the patient had a goal of abstinence than it was much more likely to reach that goal if the patient went to a treatment that advocated abstinence. It was less likely to reach the goal if a patient had a goal of low-risk consumption and went to a treatment that advocated low-risk consumption. The treatment that advocated abstinence was also more effective when the patient were ambivalent of his/her own goal. (more…)