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...
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Advances in Medications and Tailoring Treatment for Alcohol Use Disorder
Despite decades of research on various methods for treating alcohol use disorder (AUD), AUD remains prevalent throughout the world, making it critical to develop a more comprehensive approach to address the issue. Heavy drinking is the third largest risk factor for global disease burden, leading to enormous social and economic decline (World Health Organization 2014). Each year, alcohol misuse is...
Understanding the mechanisms that underlie recovery from alcohol use disorder (AUD) is critical to advancing AUD treatment science (Huebner and Tonigan 2007; National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism [NIAAA] 2009). Scientific progress over the last three decades has led to the development of a number of effective behavioral and pharmacological AUD interventions (Dutra et al. 2008)...
Advances in Electrophysiological Research
The discovery and recording of electrical activity (electroencephalography [EEG]) in the human brain in 1924 by the German physician Hans Berger (Collura 1993; Haas 2003) has led to numerous scientific breakthroughs and clinical applications (Borck 2005; Gloor 1994). Recording brain activity in humans using scalp electrodes provides a noninvasive, sensitive measure of ongoing brain function...
Neuroimaging, particularly magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), has begun to tease apart the underlying mechanisms behind alcohol’s deleterious effects on the fetus and eventually may lead to earlier detection of what can be devastating child neurodevelopmental deficits. In 1968, researchers first reported an association between prenatal alcohol exposure and what can be persistent adverse cognitive...
Long-lasting changes in synaptic function (i.e., synaptic plasticity) have long been thought to contribute to information storage in the nervous system (Kandel et al. 2014; Lovinger 2010). Studies combining behavioral and physiological analyses offer strong evidence supporting this hypothesis (Kandel et al. 2014; Ramirez et al. 2014). On the one hand, this plasticity allows the organism to adapt...
Alcohol Use As a Risk Factor in Infections and Healing: A Clinician's Perspective
Alcohol use and misuse have been part of human society for centuries. Early physicians recognized since the 1800s that alcohol produced not only impairment of the senses but also higher predisposition for tuberculosis. William Osler, the father of scientific medicine, reported in 1905 that patients who misused alcohol had higher predisposition to pneumonia (Osler 2001).
Between 2006 and 2010 in...
Alcohol and Viral Hepatitis: Role of Lipid Rafts
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...
Alcohol and the Immune System - Editor's Note
Clinicians have long observed an association between excessive alcohol consumption and adverse immune-related health effects such as susceptibility to pneumonia. In recent decades, this association has been expanded to a greater likelihood of acute respiratory stress syndromes (ARDS), sepsis, alcoholic liver disease (ALD), and certain cancers; a higher incidence of postoperative complications; and...
A person with alcoholism engages in risky or dangerous drinking despite experiencing serious negative physical and social consequences. Such persistence in pursuing damaging behaviors suggests that the short-term “appetitive” results of drinking (such as intoxication and losing one’s inhibitions) have greater control over the alcoholic’s behavior than do the negative consequences. From a...