An analysis of brain tissue samples from chronic alcoholics reveals changes that occur at the molecular level in alcohol abuse – and suggests a potential treatment target, according to researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

The influence of genetics increases as young women transition from taking their first drink to becoming alcoholics. A team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that although environment is most influential in determining when girls begin to drink, genes play a larger role if they advance to problem drinking and alcohol dependence.

In a special supplement to Pediatrics, edited and sponsored by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), physicians will have access in one place to the reviews and analyses of current research on biological, behavioral, and environmental changes during childhood and adolescence that foster the initiation, maintenance, and acceleration of illegal use of alcohol by underage youth.

Keeping middle schoolers from alcohol is a tougher task in the inner city than in rural areas, even for experts armed with the best prevention programs, a new University of Florida study shows.

First there was diabulimia. Now there is drunkorexia - another new and buzzworthy term for some not-so-new behavior.

Doctors may one day be able to control alcohol addiction by manipulating the molecular events in the brain that underlie anxiety associated with alcohol withdrawal, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine and the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center report in the March 5 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

Although children of alcoholics (COAs) have a greater risk of developing alcohol-use disorders (AUDs), not all COAs will develop AUDs. This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain responses to emotional stimuli in adolescent COAs considered “vulnerable” or “resilient” to AUDs.

A brain circuit that underlies feelings of stress and anxiety shows promise as a new therapeutic target for alcoholism, according to new studies by researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Gastrointestinal bleeding can be fatal - something which is not known to many alcoholics. This was the conclusion reached by the Leipzig gastroenterologist Niels Teich and his colleagues, on the basis of a survey in the current edition of Deutsches Дrzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2008; 105[5]: 73-7).

Patients with a certain gene variant drank less and experienced better overall clinical outcomes than patients without the variant while taking the medication naltrexone, according to an analysis of participants in the National Institutes of Health's 2001-2004 COMBINE (Combined Pharmacotherapies and Behavioral Interventions for Alcohol Dependence) Study.

Previous research has shown that immigrant groups that acculturate to mainstream American culture tend to have more alcohol-related problems. Most of this research, however, has been conducted among Hispanic populations living in U.S. metropolitan areas.

Not all children prenatally exposed to alcohol show distinctive facial anomalies usually associated with fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS).