Alcohol Expectancies and Drinking Characteristics in Parents of Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Alcohol expectancies, drinking characteristics, and their association were examined in 587 adults: 431 parents of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 156 parents of children without ADHD. In addition to examining both traditional and parenting-specific alcohol expectancies for these adults, risk variables cutting across the two groups were considered: single parenthood and male gender. Few differences in mean expectancy levels were found between parents of children with and without ADHD, between single and married mothers, and between men and women. Furthermore, expectancies did not predict drinking differently across groups. However, there was some support for the utility of assessing parental expectations of alcohol's effects on interactions with children, and there were robust and interesting effects of socioeconomic status on expectancies and drinking. Single mothers also reported consuming higher quantities of alcohol than married mothers. Findings are discussed in terms of the link between ADHD and alcoholism, the ability of alcohol expectancies to explain drinking differences between high risk groups, the effect of socioeconomic status on these variables, and single motherhood as a vulnerability factor for increased drinking.     

Anxiety and Drinking Behavior: Moderating Effects of Tension-Reduction Alcohol Outcome Expectancies

We evaluated whether alcohol outcome expectancies moderate the association between measures of anxiety and alcohol use. Student subjects completed questionnaires related to their level of anxiety, recent alcohol-use patterns, and outcome expectancies for alcohol to be tension reducing. Interviews were used to determine the presence or absence of alcohol dependence in subjects and in their first- and second-degree relatives. Consistent with predictions, male subjects with high tension-reduction alcohol outcome expectancies showed a stronger positive correlation between measures of anxiety and drinking behavior than did male subjects with low tensionreduction outcome expectancies. However, this effect was not found for female subjects. We note past studies showing similar gender effects, and relate the overall study findings to the tension-reduction hypothesis of stress-induced drinking.     

Population Consumption of Alcohol and Proportion Drinking

Data on the relationship between population average alcohol consumption and the proportion of the population that drinks alcohol is limited. Nevertheless a quite large and statistically significant positive correlation between them is demonstrated with the six data sets presented here. Part of this relationship is probably the result of confounding variables, but evidence is presented that it could also be of a direct cause and effect nature whose directionality could lie both ways. The importance of a direct relationship lies in the possibilities for prevention of alcohol related problems that might derive from a policy of abstention.     

Effects of MAOA-Genotype, Alcohol Consumption, and Aging on Violent Behavior

Background:  Environmental factors appear to interact with a functional polymorphism ( MAOA-LPR ) in the promoter region of the monoamine oxidase A gene ( MAOA ) in determining some forms of antisocial behavior. However, how MAOA - LPR modulates the effects of other factors such as alcohol consumption related to antisocial behavior is not completely understood.
Methods:  This study examines the conjunct effect of MAOA-LPR , alcohol consumption, and aging on the risk for violent behavior. Recidivism in severe impulsive violent behavior was assessed after 7 to 15 years in a sample of 174 Finnish alcoholic offenders, the majority of whom exhibited antisocial or borderline personality disorder or both, and featured impulsive temperament traits.
Results:  The risk for committing new acts of violence increased by 2.3% for each kilogram of increase in yearly mean alcohol consumption ( p =  0.004) and decreased by 7.3% for every year among offenders carrying the high activity MAOA genotype. In contrast, alcohol consumption and aging failed to affect violent behavior in the low activity MAOA genotyped offenders. MAOA-LPR showed no main effect on the risk for recidivistic violence.
Conclusions:  Violent offenders carrying the high activity MAOA genotype differ in several ways from carriers with the low activity MAOA risk allele previously associated with antisocial behavior. Finnish high activity MAOA genotyped risk alcoholics exhibiting antisocial behavior, high alcohol consumption, and abnormal alcohol-related impulsive and uncontrolled violence might represent an etiologically distinct alcohol dependence subtype.     

Increase of Rat Alcohol Drinking Behavior Depends on the Age of Drinking Onset

Background Although alcohol drinking onset in younger people is associated with an increased risk of alcohol-related injuries, other factors, such as habituation and susceptibility to alcohol, in the process of aging have not been adequately examined in animal models. In the present study, we determined whether age of drinking onset affected alcohol drinking behavior and led to alcohol tolerance in experimental animals, and extrapolated some of the findings to human alcohol drinking patterns.
Methods In the first experiment, 18 rats that were naive to alcohol were tested at the age of 1, 4, and 10 months with 4 hr of access to 10% (v/v) alcohol. After the time access tests, these animals (1, 4, and 10 months of age) were housed individually and given free access to 10% alcohol solution and tap water. At 3 and 6 months later, all rats that had experienced alcohol drinking were studied for the voluntary consumption of the alcohol solution, alcohol preference, under the two-bottle method in a second experiment.
Results In the 4-hr alcohol-access test, alcohol intake (g/kg/hr) was significantly increased at 0.5 and 1 hr in 1- and 4-month-old naive rats compared with 10-month-old naive rats. The daily alcohol intake (g/kg/day) of rats with drinking onset at 1 month of age was significantly increased at 3 and 6 months after the voluntary alcohol consumption. The daily alcohol intake in the rats with drinking onset at 4 months of age was significantly increased at 6 months only. However, the daily alcohol intake did not change in the rats with drinking onset at 10 months of age through the alcohol preference test.
Conclusions Alcohol drinking behavior in experimental animals depends on the age of alcohol drinking onset.     

DSM-III Criteria for Alcohol Abuse: Associations with Alcohol Consumption Behavior

DSM-III criteria for diagnosing alcohol abuse in a sample of hospitalized alcoholics highly correlated with each other and were poorly correlated with self-reported drinking pattern, quantity, and consequences of alcohol consumption. These findings question the specificity and the construct validity of the DSM-III criteria for diagnosing alcohol abuse.     

Effects of Moderate Alcohol Consumption During Pregnancy on Child Development at 18 and 42 Months

The aim of this study was to estimate the association between moderate alcohol consumption in pregnancy and child development to the age of 3.5 years. Furthermore, the aim was to compare development indices at 18 and 42 months of age. This study is an extension of the Danish participation in the EuroMac study. In a two-stage sampling, pregnant women in a well-defined region (Odense, Denmark) were recruited to a follow-up study according to their reported drinking habits in the first trimester of pregnancy. All among 2880 pregnant women who reported an alcohol consumption early in pregnancy (12th week of gestation) of at least 5 drinks/week were ascertained (164 women). A similar age and expected time of delivery matched group was selected from the remaining group of pregnant women. Alcohol consumption data were based on self-reported data, and child development recording was done blindly by two psychologists at 18 and 42 months after birth. Two hundred fifty-one mother-child pairs participated in all follow-up studies. None of the reported levels of alcohol intake was statistically significantly associated with any of the child development indices (including measures of binge drinking). Comparing child development indices at 18 and 42 months did, however, reveal a rather large variation over time for alcohol exposures, as well as nonexposures. A large variation in the outcome measure will tend to mask effects of any exposures, but nevertheless it is unlikely that a low alcohol intake in pregnancy has any substantial impact on child development.     

Personality and Drinking Behavior in Alcohol Dependence: A Survival Analysis

Baseline levels of Five-Factor personality Neuroticism and Conscientiousness have been shown to predict clinician-assessed relapse in individuals with alcohol dependence, with high Neuroticism and low Conscientiousness increasing risk for relapse. These findings were reexamined with a behaviorally based, temporally-precise outcome measure (first heavy drinking date after baseline) utilizing the drinking data of a diverse treatment sample of 364 alcohol-dependent individuals over 2-year follow-up. Survival analysis results failed to replicate Neuroticism and Conscientiousness as univariate predictors of drinking behavior over time but found support for the effect of Neuroticism in a multivariate model of clinical and demographic predictors. Other Five-Factor personality factors were tested in exploratory analyses. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Self-Report of Drinking Compared to Objective Markers of Alcohol Consumption

Background: The validity of self-report data is an area of continuing concern in the substance abuse treatment field. It is uncertain how well self-report of alcohol relapse corresponds with more objective indices. Methods: We compared the self-report of alcohol relapse to collateral reports and biological indices of relapse. Twelve-month post-treatment follow-up data were collected from 94 male and female alcohol dependent veterans and 93 of their respective collateral contacts. Biological indices included breathalyzer data, and the blood enzymes aspartate aminotransferase, y-glutamyltransferase, and alanine aminotransferase. Results: A collapsed factor of the more objective indices of use was moderately associated with self-report. A logistic regression analysis revealed that only collateral reports of use predicted the self-report of alcohol relapse. The specificity of collateral report was 82.4% and the sensitivity was 71.9%. Conclusions: Collateral informants serve an important function in supporting the validity of self-report of abstinence versus relapse.     

Difficulties with Questions on Usual Drinking and the Measurement of Alcohol Consumption

Questions about usual drinking play an important role in the construction of alcohol consumption measures. However, little is known about difficulties in answering these questions for respondents with variability in their drinking patterns. We investigated this in a community sample of 945 drinkers and in a clinical sample of 400 patients treated for alcohol and/or drug problems. Demographic variables were not consistently related to self-reported difficulty in answering, but a diagnosis of current DSM-IV alcohol dependence was significantly related in both samples. In modeling the relationship between alcohol consumption and DSM-IV alcohol dependence, the fit of the model to the data was significantly improved by the addition of a variable indicating respondents'difficulty answering the usual drinking questions. Using this information in the development of alcohol consumption questions may provide more precise estimates of the risk from alcohol consumption to outcomes such as alcohol dependence.     

Beverage Effects on Patterns of Alcohol Consumption

In this paper an analysis is made of beverage preferences and their effect on alcohol consumption patterns. For this purpose we have used the 1993 Spanish National Household Health Survey conducted on members of the population aged 16 or over. Beer and spirits are consumed more frequently by young people and wine by older people. The most consumed daily drink is wine and beer on a weekly basis. Men always drank more frequently and consumed a greater number of drinks per occasion than women for the three types of drink analyzed. The study shows that beverage preference is an important factor in the characterization of alcohol use patterns.     

The Aversive Effect of Acetaldehyde on Alcohol Drinking Behavior in the Rat

There are a number of indications suggesting that acetaldehyde (AcH) is one factor affecting the alcohol drinking behavior in laboratory animals. In the present study, the voluntary alcohol consumption in a free-choice situation was recorded in 17 female Spraque-Dawley rats fed with two different diets. The first diet (commercial Astra-Ewos, Sweden) caused significantly ( p < 0.001) higher blood AcH concentrations after oral alcohol administration and lower alcohol preferences (alcohol intake as percentage of total fluid intake) than the other diet (prepared at the Alko laboratories). With the Alko diet, the individual preference values correlated negatively with the blood AcH concentrations ( p < 0.01) and positively with the liver aldehyde dehydrogenase activities ( p < 0.05). Hepatic alcohol oxidation rate was found to correlate positively with the AcH concentrations from perfused livers ( p < 0.05) and negatively with the alcohol preferences ( p < 0.05, Alko diet). The results are discussed considering a possible biphasic relation between the AcH metabolism and alcohol drinking behavior.     

Development of Alcohol Drinking Behavior in Rat Lines Selectively Bred for Divergent Alcohol Preference

A characteristic of heritable alcoholism is an early onset of alcohol abuse, which may begin at or before the age of adolescence. The objective of the present study was to determine the ontogeny of alcohol drinking behavior before and during puberty in the selectively bred alcohol-preferring (P), alcohol-nonpreferring (NP), high alcohol drinking (HAD), and low alcohol drinking (LAD) lines of rats. In addition, the effects of postweaning housing conditions (single- or pair-housed) and initiation procedure (4 days forced ethanol or free-choice) were evaluated in male and female P rats. Results indicate that high alcohol drinking in P and HAD (replicate line 2) rats, as well as low alcohol drinking behavior in NP and LAD (replicate line 2) rats, is present as early as 3 to 4 weeks of age. Ethanol intakes in juvenile P and HAD rats reached levels of ∼4 to 5 g/kg/day by 38 to 41 days of age and were comparable with levels observed in adults. Neither housing conditions nor ethanol initiation procedure significantly altered the acquisition or magnitude of alcohol intake levels in juvenile male and female P rats. These results suggest that the neural substrates underlying divergent ethanol drinking behavior in P/NP and HAD/LAD lines of rats are present early in life.     

The Influence of Alcohol Drinking and Alcohol Use Disorders on Psychiatric Disorders and Suicidal Behavior

The present review reports on the influence of alcohol drinking and alcohol use disorders on psychiatric disorders and suicidal behaviour. The base of the study was previous reviews of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism publication Alcohol and Health in 1993 and by Helgason in 1996. Using a defined search strategy in Medline, another 42 articles from 1994 to 1996 were included in the comorbidity part and 19 in the suicidal part. Epidemio-logical and clinical studies confirm high comorbidity of substance use disorders and other mental disorders. Alcohol abuse worsens the course of psychiatric disorders. Light to moderate alcohol consumption has no documented positive effect on the course. Levels of risk consumption of alcohol in psychiatric disorders have not been well defined. One-fifth to one-third of increased deaths rate among alcoholics is explained by suicide. In countries with high alcohol consumption, the suicide rate is also high and is increasing with total increased alcohol consumption. Comorbidity is common among suicide victims, and substance use disorders is most frequently combined with depressive disorders. Interpersonal loss within 6 weeks before suicide is more often present among alcoholics than nonalcoholic suicide victims.     

Alcohol and Aldehyde Dehydrogenase Genotypes and Drinking Behavior in Japanese

The effects of the genotype of alcohol dehydrogenase-2 (ADH2) and mitochondrial aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH2) on drinking behavior were investigated in a population of 451 Japanese. Although the ALDH2*2 allele had a significant inhibitory effect on alcohol consumption, hence on drinking problems, the apparent association was not confirmed between ADH2 genotype and overall drinking patterns for either males or females. However, the frequency of the ADH2*2 allele was significantly lower in male Japanese classified as alcoholic on the basis of the Kurihama Alcoholism Screening Test than in nonalcoholic males. These results corroborate a previous study that revealed a significantly lower ADH2*2 allele frequency in hospitalized Japanese alcoholics than in the general population. Together, these studies suggest that the ALDH2*2 allele has an inhibitory effect on drinking behavior, irrespective of the level of alcohol consumption, whereas the effect of the ADH2 polymorphism only becomes apparent in individuals with higher alcohol consumption, such as alcoholics.     

Effects of Paternal Alcohol Consumption in Mice

Male mice were divided into four groups, one group was given ad libitum access to a liquid alcohol diet containing 35% ethanol derived calories (EDC). A second group was pair fed an isocaloric control diet containing 17.5% EDC whereas a third was similarly treated with a 0% EDC diet for a minimum of 42 days. A fourth group served as ad libitum nontreated controls to assess the role of pair feeding. Males were then mated with nontreated females. The males consuming alcohol had an increased percentage of abnormal sperm and there was a significant effect of paternal alcohol exposure on implantation sites, but no effect on pre- or postnatal mortality or fetal weight. These results suggest that paternal alcohol consumption adversely affects sperm production but does not affect development of offspring in mice.     

Alcohol Use Disorder among Adolescents: Impact of Paternal Alcoholism on Drinking Behavior, Drinking Motivation, and Consequences

This study examined the impact of an Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) in biological fathers on drinking history, context, motivation, and consequences in male and female adolescents dichotomized according to the presence or absence of an AUD. Main effects for paternal history of an AUD were not found on any variable. Significant interactions were observed between father-son diagnostic status with respect to age of first alcohol use ( p < 0.001) and peer relationships ( p < 0.001). No significant interactions were observed between father-daughter diagnostic status. As expected, adolescents with AUD differed from adolescents without AUD on numerous variables pertaining to drinking behavior, history, and consequences. These findings indicate that there is no strong or pervasive effect of paternal AUD on adolescent offspring's AUD characteristics. Key Words: Adolescence, Drug Abuse, Alcoholism, Family History.