National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)

A study reported in the November 8 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (Volume 284, Number 18) shows that communities that undertake comprehensive prevention strategies can effectively reduce alcohol-related traffic crashes and injuries from crashes and assaults. Relative to matched comparison sites, intervention communities (two in California and one in South Carolina) experienced marked reductions in alcohol-related...

Ralph Hingson, Sc.D., and other researchers at the Boston University School of Public Health reported in the September 27 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association that the younger people are when they begin drinking the more likely they are to be injured later in life when under the influence of alcohol. Those who start drinking before age...

Investigators at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio report in the lead article in today's Journal of the American Medical Association (Volume 284, Number 8) that the medication ondansetron may be an effective therapy for patients with early-onset alcohol dependence (alcoholism). Ondansetron appears to work by acting on serotonin, one of the brain's many neurotransmitters. The...

Researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia report in today's Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research that children between the ages of 3 and 6 years are likely to dislike the smell of beer if their parents report drinking to escape feelings of unhappiness. The findings extend earlier knowledge that young children acquire sensory learning about alcohol and suggest...

Reporting in today's Early Edition of the August Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Stanford University describe a novel approach that may help scientists to better understand how alcohols and anesthetic drugs interact with certain brain proteins. The report also provides the strongest evidence to date that alcohols have specific...

Researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development report in the current issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research (Volume 24, Number 5) results from the first study to determine whether future drinking may be predicted by response to stress during infancy. Monkeys that responded with high cortisol...

Researchers at the University of Washington report in the May 15 Journal of Neuroscience (Volume 20, RC75) the first direct evidence in mice that protein kinase A (PKA) signaling regulates both alcohol-seeking behavior and sensitivity to some of the effects of alcohol intoxication. Given a choice between plain water and solutions containing alcohol, mice missing the RIIB subunit of PKA...

"What are you waiting for - last call, or a wake-up call?" is the question to be posed by alcohol research and treatment leaders at a media briefing to be held 10:30-11:30 A.M., Tuesday, April 4, in Georgetown University's Copley Hall. The briefing launches the second annual National Alcohol Screening Day (NASD), a national outreach program designed to educate people...

The little-known but alarming facts surrounding alcohol consumption by children ages 9 to 15 have prompted more than 25 Governors' Spouses to join forces and put this issue on the national agenda. Today they launched Leadership to Keep Children Alcohol Free, a multi-year, public-private partnership focused on preventing the use of alcohol by children, funded by the National Institute on...

Harvard Medical School and Veterans Administration researchers report in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that certain long-chain alcohols can block harmful effects of short-chain alcohols including ethanol (beverage alcohol) on nerve cell growth and development. "The findings may lead eventually to medications that reduce the damaging effects of alcohol in both fetal development and in adults," said...

Simi Valley, California. Neuroscience research, including studies of alcohol actions on the brain, biological and behavioral mechanisms of chronic drinking, mechanisms of brain damage and cognitive dysfunction, and animal and human genetic studies on the role of genes in mediating behavioral responses to alcohol, is a key to optimal treatments and targeted prevention among persons at risk for alcoholism (alcohol...

A study in the February 2000 Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research (Volume 24, Number 2) presents the first concrete evidence that protracted, heavy alcohol use can impair brain function in adolescents. It is unclear at present whether the damage is reversible. Supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a research team led by Sandra A. Brown, Ph.D...

A study in the January 2000 issue of the American Journal of Public Health (Volume 90, Number 1) reports that approximately one in four U.S. children (19 million children or 28.6 percent of children 0-17 years) is exposed at some time before age 18 to familial alcohol dependence (alcoholism), alcohol abuse, or both. "The design and methods of today's report...

A study reported in the December issue of Nature Neuroscience (Volume 2, Number 12, pages 1084-1090) identifies a new cell membrane channel where ethanol, the alcohol found in intoxicating beverages, may act. Neurobiologists from the Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research and Section on Neurobiology, and the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, College of Pharmacy, University of Texas (UT)...

A study reported in the October issue of Gastroenterology (Volume 177, pages 1-12) shows that tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), a pro-inflammatory protein, plays an important role in the development of early liver damage associated with alcohol consumption. Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) found that wild-type mice fed alcohol continuously over four weeks exhibited liver...

A study in the current Archives of General Psychiatry (Volume 56, pages 719-724) shows that nalmefene, an opioid antagonist that is not now commercially available in the oral form studied, is effective in preventing relapse to heavy drinking in alcohol dependent individuals. Barbara J. Mason, Ph.D., and colleagues at the University of Miami School of Medicine found from a 12-week...

A study reported in the Journal of Family Practice (Volume 48, Number 5) shows that brief intervention can reduce alcohol consumption in problem drinkers aged 65 years and older. Project GOAL (Guiding Older Adult Lifestyles) is the first U.S. randomized controlled clinical trial to test the effectiveness of brief counseling by community-based primary care physicians in older problem drinkers. "Following...

John Crabbe, Ph.D., Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Oregon Health Sciences University, Department of Behavioral Neuroscience, with colleagues in three widely separated laboratories report in this week's Science that animals with the same genes performed differently on a variety of behavioral tests depending on the animals' location. This was true although a long list of environmental influences was equalized...

Bethesda, Maryland. April 3, 1999 - Free, anonymous screenings for alcohol problems will be available Thursday, April 8, during the first-ever National Alcohol Screening Day (NASD), a public service event of National Alcohol Awareness Month. A national effort to increase the identification and awareness of alcohol problems, NASD is offered through a partnership of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse...

Washington, D.C. Theodore Reich, M.D., Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, and colleagues at that university and others in the NIAAA-supported Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) report in this month's Neuropsychiatric Genetics (Volume 81, Number 3) highly suggestive evidence on chromosomes 1 and 7 and more modest evidence on chromosome 2 for linkage...