Parasympathetic innervation of the pupil was studied in 30 alcoholics. Twelve alcoholics had cardiac vagal neuropathy. The resting pupillary diameters in this group were larger, and pupil responses to methacholine were greater, than in control subjects or alcoholics without vagal neuropathy. These observations imply that lesions in the parasympathetic supply to the pupil may occur in alcoholics...

In human alcoholics, the cell density is decreased in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and other brain areas. This may be due to persistent activation of cell death pathways. To address this hypothesis, we examined the status of cell death machinery in the dorsolateral PFC in alcoholics. Protein and mRNA expression levels of several key pro- and anti-apoptotic genes were compared in post-mortem samp...

Women alcoholics seeking psychiatric help have been increasing steadily over the years. The data on this subgroup however, is limited. Eighteen women alcoholics who presented to us over one year have been compared to twenty-eight men alcoholics who presented to us over one calendar month. Gender differences in the functions and effects of problem drinking were found. Men and women alcoholics di...

UNLABELLED It is well known that alcoholics are prone to severe infections and that the immune system is impaired by chronic ethanol abuse. The aim of this study is to compare serum inflammatory mediators in response to sepsis in chronic alcoholic with sepsis, non-alcoholics with sepsis and non-infected alcoholics. METHOD We included 25 alcoholics with sepsis, 34 non-alcoholics with sepsis, 3...

OBJECTIVE Alcoholism has been associated with a widespread pattern of gray matter atrophy. This study sought to investigate the spectrum of volume alterations in a population of alcoholics with only alcohol dependence, polysubstance abusing alcoholics, and a comparison population of healthy controls. METHOD Thirty-seven 'pure' alcoholics, 93 polysubstance abusing alcoholics, and 69 healthy co...

Sleep problems, which can have significant clinical and economic consequences, are more common among alcoholics than among nonalcoholics. During both drinking periods and withdrawal, alcoholics commonly experience problems falling asleep and decreased total sleep time. Other measures of sleep are also disturbed. Even alcoholics who have been abstinent for short periods of time (i.e., several we...

BACKGROUND Alcoholism is associated with susceptibility to infectious disease, particularly bacterial pneumonia. In the present study we described characteristics in alcoholic patients with bacterial meningitis and delineate the differences with findings in non-alcoholic adults with bacterial meningitis. METHODS/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS This was a prospective nationwide observational cohort study i...

BACKGROUND Most studies of the impact of alcohol dependence on the brain have examined individuals in treatment. Such samples represent a small proportion of alcoholics in the general population. Such samples may embody a bias (Berkson's fallacy) if the association between variables (for example, alcoholism and cortical gray matter loss) differs between the population of alcoholics in treatment...

From a study of the lives of 50 alcoholics who committed suicide, seven nonacute clinical/historical features were identified post hoc that appear to be intimately linked to suicide. They included continued drinking, major depressive episode, suicidal communication, poor social support, serious medical illness, unemployment, and living alone. This study examined whether these features are commo...

BACKGROUND There is controversy in the literature regarding the relationship between event-related-potential (ERP) abnormalities in abstinent alcoholics and stimulus-processing modality (i.e., visual versus auditory). The first purpose of this study was to address questions about whether ERP abnormalities observed in alcoholics are modality specific. The second purpose was to employ current sou...