Hepatic complications are a common side-effect of alcoholism. Without the detoxification capabilities of the liver, alcohol misuse induces changes in gene and protein expression throughout the body. A global proteomics approach was used to identify these protein changes in the brain. We utilised human autopsy tissue from the superior frontal gyrus (SFG) of six cirrhotic alcoholics, six alcoholi...

Sleep apnea and related disorders contribute to disturbed sleep in abstinent alcoholics. In an earlier report from our group, sleep-disordered breathing was common and increased with age in a cohort of 75 abstinent alcoholics. We now report an extension of the previous work that includes studies of an additional 103 abstinent alcoholics undergoing treatment for alcoholism (total sample = 188) a...

A point mutation in the aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 gene (ALDH2(2) allele) is considered to be a genetic deterrent for alcoholism; however, 80 of 655 Japanese alcoholics had the mutant allele. Genotype factors that might increase susceptibility by overriding the deterrent showed a higher frequency of a five repeat allele of the dopamine D4 receptor 48 bp repeat polymorphism in alcoholics with ALDH...

Two common artifacts that corrupt evoked responses are noise and background electroencephalogram (EEG). In this paper, a two-level principal component analysis (PCA) is used to reduce these artifacts from single trial evoked responses. The first level PCA is applied to reduce noise from these VEP signals while the second level PCA reduces EEG. The method is used to analyse the object recognitio...

The present study investigates the levels of locus of control, assertiveness and general wellbeing among alcoholics (N=60) and non-alcoholics (N=60). Locus of Control Scale, Rathus Assertiveness Schedule and Psychological General Well-Being Index were used for the study. Results revealed that more external control orientation and low levels of general well being in alcoholics compared to non-al...

Scalp-recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) are sensitive indicators of subtle alterations in cerebral processes. We assessed automatic auditory adaptation and detection of novel stimuli in violent and non-violent alcoholics and normal subjects. Source analysis of ERPs revealed active medial temporal and frontal regions in all subjects. Frontal lobe processed alerting tones in violent alcoho...

More than 30 years of neuropsychological testing of male alcoholics has demonstrated a pattern of alcoholism-related deficits characterized by intact verbal abilities but impaired performance on tests of abstracting, problem solving, and visualspatial functioning (Tarter, 1975). Until recently, there has been no investigation of neuropsychological functioning in women alcoholics, although the e...

OBJECTIVE To document and compare the changes in alcohol intake over the drinking career in alcoholic (n = 273) and social (n = 152) drinkers and to relate the changes to age and to the prevalence of morning drinking. METHOD Lifetime alcohol intake was assessed in face-to-face interviews by asking subjects to report drinking patterns during different "phases" of their drinking careers, beginn...

The distribution of 16 antigens of the HLA-A and 15 antigens of the HLA-B series of HLA system, the blood groups ABO, and Rh antigens were studied in 40 alcoholics with cirrhosis, 18 alcoholics without cirrhosis, and in normal control subjects. The group of alcoholics with cirrhosis showed a significantly high frequency of HLA-B13 (corrected P less than 0.01) when compared with normal subjects,...

Twenty-four chronic alcoholics admitted to hospital for detoxification after a drinking spree were examined by upper gastrointestinal endoscopy. Biopsy specimens were taken from corpus/fundus, antrum and duodenum for tissue histology (eosin stain). From the duodenum villus index and ultrastructure (scanning electron microscopy, SEM) were also performed. As a control group 12 subjectively health...