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...
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Drinking Over the Lifespan: Focus on College Ages
Approximately 41 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds are enrolled in a postsecondary degree-granting institution (National Center for Education Statistics 2013). As a group, college students, and particularly those at residential colleges (Presley et al. 2002), often drink heavily and experience myriad associated negative consequences. This selective review discusses the special characteristics of the...
Neural Pathways of Stress Integration: Relevance to Alcohol Abuse
Adaptation in the face of physical or psychological adversity is required for the survival, health, and well-being of all organisms. Adverse events, often denoted as “stressors,” initiate a diverse physiological response from multiple sources, including activation of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis.1 The HPA axis is responsible for the glucocorticoid component of the stress response...
Social and Cultural Contexts of Alcohol Use: Influences in a Social–Ecological Framework
The alcohol research literature is overwhelmingly focused on risk factors, from the societal level down to the individual. Worldwide, 3.3 million deaths were attributed to alcohol misuse in 2012 (World Health Organization 2014). Excessive alcohol use is the third leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for 88,000 deaths per year (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2014)...
Alcohol Use Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury
Alcoholic Myopathy: Pathophysiologic Mechanisms and Clinical Implications
Alcohol Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) for Girls and Women
Recovery and Youth: An Integrative Review
Alcohol-Endocannabinoid Interactions: Implications for Addiction-Related Behavioral Processes
Introduction
Endogenous cannabinoids, or endocannabinoids (eCBs), are bioactive lipid molecules that modulate signaling activity of several physiological processes involved in pain, appetite, energy balance, stress/anxiety, immune signaling, and learning and memory. Although understanding of the eCB system has grown in complexity since its discovery by Raphael Mechoulam, it is now widely known...
Effects of Alcohol on Tumor Growth, Metastasis, Immune Response, and Host Survival
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...