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Alcohol consumption during pregnancy can interfere with both embryonic and fetal development, producing a wide range of outcomes that fall under the rubric of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). FASD is the nondiagnostic umbrella term used to refer to the full range of effects that can occur following prenatal alcohol exposure. Such exposure can produce a variety of effects, including...

More than 20 years ago, Daniel Koshland compared basic with applied research, stating: “Basic research is the type that is not always practical but often leads to great discoveries. Applied research refines these discoveries into useful products” (Koshland 1993). This statement implies that basic science does not have a direct impact on human health and disease or patient outcome but offers the...

Recovery from alcoholism is a complex and long-term process with high relapse rates. Therefore, understanding why people relapse has been critically important to improving treatment outcomes. To that end, researchers are looking for clinical and biological markers that predict relapse after treatment and to use those risk factors to develop effective treatments to reduce relapse rates. One...

Translational research helps move basic science and clinical laboratory discoveries toward application in health and medicine. Through controlled experiments, basic scientists use animal models to reproduce disease characteristics caused by an agent—in this case, excessively high exposure to alcohol. Through systematic study and observation, clinical research scientists identify symptomatic and...

It has been estimated that approximately 2 billion people worldwide drink alcohol on a daily basis, with more than 70 million people having a diagnosed alcohol use disorder (World Health Organization 2004). Globally, alcohol use is the fifth leading risk factor for premature death and disability among people between the ages of 15 and 49 (Lim et al. 2012). Excessive alcohol consumption in the...

Alcohol is the most used and abused psychoactive drug worldwide. Alcohol use and misuse, including alcohol use disorder, can have devastating effects and account for 5.9 percent of deaths and 5.1 percent of the global burden of disease and injury, thereby also imposing a significant social and economic burden on society (World Health Organization 2015). Moreover, treatments for alcohol abuse have...

People have been drinking alcoholic beverages for millennia, and alcohol consumption has played an important role throughout human history, being linked to ancient and modern religions, early medicine, and social occasions and celebrations. Although alcohol consumption is socially accepted across many cultures, heavy and prolonged alcohol intake can lead not only to physical dependence but also to...

Alcohol use and abuse have been implicated as etiological factors in the genesis of an increasing number of cancer types in both men and women. In 2012, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) listed both beverage alcohol (i.e., ethanol) and its major metabolite, acetaldehyde, as tumor-inducing substances (i.e., carcinogens) in humans. The most recent worldwide statistic from 2002...

Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) is a complex disease that affects millions of people worldwide and eventually can lead to liver cirrhosis and liver cancer (i.e., hepatocellular carcinoma). Aside from the direct cytotoxic and the oxidative-stress–mediated effects that alcohol and its metabolite, acetaldehyde, exert on hepatocytes, alcohol ingestion activates both the innate and adaptive immune...