National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)

Washington, D.C. Jeffrey C. Long, Ph.D., David Goldman, M.D., and coworkers in the Laboratory of Neurogenetics, Division of Intramural Clinical and Biological Research, NIAAA, report in this month's Neuropsychiatric Genetics (Volume 81, Number 3) highly suggestive evidence in one region of chromosome 11 and good evidence in one region of chromosome 4 for linkage to alcohol dependence (commonly termed alcoholism)...

Washington, D.C. Drs. Henri Begleiter and Bernice Porjesz, Department of Psychiatry, State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn, and colleagues in the six-university Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) identify in the May Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology (Volume 108, Number 3) chromosomal regions that may underlie the functional organization of human neuroelectric activity, including the...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The younger the age of drinking onset, the greater the chance that an individual at some point in life will develop a clinically defined alcohol disorder, according to a new report released today by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Young people who began drinking before age 15 were four times more likely to develop...

Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna E. Shalala announces the availability of the Ninth Special Report to the U.S. Congress on Alcohol and Health, the latest in a series of triennial reports begun in 1970. The report highlights recent research on the effects of alcohol use, abuse, and dependence on individuals and society, new knowledge about the mechanisms of...

Michael Fleming, M.D., M.P.H., and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison report in the April 2 Journal of the American Medical Association results from Project TrEAT (Trial for Early Alcohol Treatment), the first large U.S. clinical trial to test the effectiveness of brief physician advice for intervening with nondependent problem drinkers. Supported by a grant from...

HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala recently announced the appointment of six new members to the National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). The Council advises on the conduct and support of biomedical and behavioral research, health services research, research training, and health information dissemination with respect to the causes...

NIAAA Reports Project MATCH Main Findings Washington, D.C. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism today announced main findings from the largest and most statistically powerful clinical trial of psychotherapies ever undertaken. Designed to test whether different types of alcoholics respond differently to specific therapeutic approaches, the eight-year, multisite trial confirmed one hypothetical "match" and did not confirm ten...

Proportions of welfare recipients using, abusing, or dependent on alcohol or illicit drugs are consistent with proportions of both the adult U.S. population and adults who do not receive welfare, report National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism researchers in the November American Journal of Public Health. However, certain age, gender, and ethnic characteristics of the general population group with...

Principal investigator Cheryl L. Perry, Ph.D., co-principal investigator Carolyn L. Williams, Ph.D., and colleagues at the University of Minnesota report in the July 18 American Journal of Public Health initial findings from Project Northland , a 3-year test in 24 Minnesota school districts of combined classroom and community interventions to prevent alcohol use by young adolescents. The researchers found that...

Bethesda, Maryland. If multiple city departments and private citizens join together to implement comprehensive traffic safety strategies, they can significantly reduce traffic deaths and injuries, according to an article by Ralph Hingson, Sc.D., M.P.H., and colleagues at Boston University in the June American Journal of Public Health (Volume 86, No. 6). The Saving Lives program reduced traffic deaths by 25...

Alcohol Damage Bethesda, Maryland . Researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Brockton/West Roxbury Veterans Administration Medical Center report in today's issue of The Journal of Cell Biology a molecular action of alcohol that may produce some of the damage seen in fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and fetal alcohol effects (FAE). The same mechanism may play a role in such...

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) today released The Physicians' Guide to Helping Patients with Alcohol Problems , a step by step approach to aid primary care physicians during routine office visits in identifying and advising patients at risk for or experiencing alcohol problems. Developed by NIAAA with an interdisciplinary working group of alcohol researchers and health...

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism today released the first report from its National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiologic Survey (NLAES), including the most precise estimates to date of alcohol abuse and dependence among U.S. adults. The figures are reported by Bridget F. Grant, Ph.D., Ph.D., and colleagues in the current issue (Vol. 18, No. 3) of Alcohol Health &...

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism welcomes the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announcement of an indication for use of the pharmacologic agent naltrexone (REVIA tm) as a safe and effective adjunct to psychosocial treatments for alcoholism. Naltrexone offers new hope for preventing relapse in many of the more than 1 million Americans treated each year for the...

Alcohol consumption and its harms are common among young people, including those who are below the legal drinking age of 21. Some people argue that the current age-21 drinking limit in the United States is “not working,” and propose that the drinking age be lowered to 18. Researchers recently conducted economic analyses to estimate the effects of the minimum legal...

Recent research suggests that receptors for the neurotransmitter GABA(A) that lie outside of the synapse and which contain a molecular fragment known as a delta-subunit are sensitive to alcohol, raising the possibility that these receptors might help produce alcohol’s reinforcing effects after consuming one or a few drinks. In the current study, researchers tested the hypothesis that these extrasynaptic GABA(A)...

Some people experience the initial effects of alcohol as stimulating and euphoric, while others experience mostly unpleasant sedative effects. How individuals’ immediate responses to alcohol influence their future drinking behavior has been an active area of scientific research. One theory holds that people who have a low level of positive response to alcohol and who also are less sensitive to...

Alcohol use during pregnancy contributes to many problems in exposed children. Heavy prenatal alcohol exposure leads to fetal alcohol syndrome, a devastating birth defect characterized by craniofacial malformations, neurological and motor deficits, intrauterine growth retardation, learning disabilities, and behavioral and social deficits. Most women who drink alcohol during pregnancy, however, are light-to-moderate drinkers in early pregnancy and quit or decrease...

Episodes of heavy alcohol consumption leading to intoxication are associated with many health and safety problems, including unintentional injuries, sexual assault, domestic violence and alcohol poisoning. Previous studies have shown that brain molecules called GABAA receptors appear to play a role in excessive drinking. In a new study, researchers used an established rat model of binge drinking to investigate how...

Brain circuits that connect the frontal lobes with the cerebellum are damaged in chronic alcoholics and may contribute to cognitive deficits in these individuals. But whether these “frontocerebellar” abnormalities are present in individuals at high risk for alcoholism before they start using alcohol is unknown. To find out, scientists led by Dr. Megan Herting at the Oregon Health and Science...