A new study shows promise for reducing risky drinking among Army National Guard members over the long term, potentially improving their health and readiness to serve. The number of days each month that Guard members said they had been binge-drinking dropped by up to half over the course of a year of either online only education or online and peer-based support.
The relationship between alcohol use and burn injuries is a negative one in multiple ways. Not only are about 50% of adults who sustain burn injuries intoxicated at the time of injury, suggesting that alcohol use may have contributed to the incident, but alcohol use among burn-injured patients is associated with more severe complications, delayed recovery, and increased morbidity and mortality.
A multi-disciplinary team of Indiana University researchers is focusing their efforts on a growing public health concern: binge and “high-intensity” drinking—extreme drinking behaviors that are increasingly prevalent among college-age adults.
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has awarded Wake Forest University School of Medicine a renewal grant of $8 million over five years for research on alcohol use disorder. With the support of the grant, the Wake Forest Translational Alcohol Research Center will build upon a highly productive translational alcohol research program that was established with prior support from the NIH.
New research from the University at Buffalo provides the most comprehensive assessment to date of drinking patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic and their association with four clinically prevalent mental health disorders in the U.S.
Increasing the proportion of non-alcoholic drinks on sale in online supermarkets could reduce the amount of alcohol people purchase, suggests a study published today led by researchers at the University of Cambridge.
Heavy alcohol use creates a vicious cycle: It changes signaling pathways in the brain, which in turn affects cognitive functions like decision-making and impulse control — and makes the individual more likely to drink. The mechanism behind this may involve the brain’s immune system, according to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York.
New research led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis identifies a common genetic signature that may increase a person's risk of developing substance use disorders. The work eventually could lead to universal therapies to treat multiple substance use disorders and potentially help people diagnosed with more than one.
A tool allowing research participants to self-identify beyond binary categories of male and female performed well in a study of college student drinking. The study, published in Alcohol: Clinical and Experimental Research, demonstrates a method to conduct research that is more inclusive of the increasing number of individuals identifying as transgender, nonbinary, and other genders who may be at higher risk for alcohol use disorders. The study encourages the development of future research instruments that capture a broader diversity of genders in order to promote a more representative body of scientific knowledge and a more complete understanding of health influences and outcomes.
Over the past 20 years, the death rate from drug poisonings in the U.S. has tripled and suicide and alcoholic liver disease death rates have increased by 30 percent — particularly among middle-aged white Americans. Daniel Hungerman, professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame, and his co-authors studied the connection between a sharp downturn of religious participation in the late 1980s and the swift rise in these "deaths of despair" among white Americans ages 45 to 54 in the early 1990s.
A shot of a liver-produced hormone called FGF21 sobered up mice that had passed out from alcohol, allowing them to regain consciousness and coordination much faster than those that didn’t receive this treatment, UT Southwestern researchers report in a new study. The findings, published in Cell Metabolism, could lead to effective treatments for acute alcohol intoxication, which is responsible for about 1 million emergency room visits in the U.S. each year.
For people with alcohol use disorder (AUD), there is a constant, vicious cycle between changes to the brain and changes to behavior. AUD can alter signaling pathways in the brain; in turn, those changes can exacerbate drinking.
A new national study published in BMC Public Health suggests that problematic social media use in early adolescents is associated with both positive and negative alcohol beliefs, which play a key role in predicting alcohol use and, potentially, the development of alcohol use disorder later in life.
Fluctuating impulsivity in college students is linked to increased positive thoughts about alcohol, heavier drinking, and more negative consequences, a new study suggests—information that could inform more effective intervention programs to reduce alcohol harm. Almost a third of young adults report binge drinking in the past month, and 16% meet criteria for alcohol use disorder in the past year. Impulsivity, a tendency to act rashly without considering consequences, is known to be associated with heavier drinking. A predictive behavioral model theorizes that impulsive people are particularly predisposed to certain beliefs about alcohol and that this influences their consumption. These beliefs—alcohol expectancies—determine how individuals perceive the positive and negative effects of drinking. Positive expectancies (e.g., increased sociability) are linked to higher alcohol use, while negative expectancies (e.g., becoming impaired) are thought to restrain drinking behavior. Recent resea
Adults with Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) seeking to moderate their drinking respond differently to interventions depending on their age, a new study suggests.
Newly arrived immigrants drank decreasing amounts of alcohol in their first two years in the United States, according to a study of Latino immigrants living in Miami-Dade County in Florida.
A computer-based intervention associated with reduced binge drinking episodes among high school students could yield a cost savings of eight thousand euros, according to a Spanish study published in Alcohol: Clinical and Experimental Research. The study found the computer-based intervention cost-effective, resulting in societal savings of €8,000 for each binge drinking episode averted. Computer and web-based interventions can potentially reach a far larger number of students than face-to-face screening and intervention.