'Hazardous Drinking' More Common Than Thought

(HealthDay News) -- Hazardous drinking -- drinking more than guidelines recommend -- is common and needs to be recognized as a genuine public health problem, Finnish researchers say.

Currently, alcohol-use disorders are divided into two categories: alcohol abuse/harmful use and alcohol dependence. Some experts believe these two categories aren't sufficient and that hazardous drinking should be added as a diagnosis that precedes the other two.

"This is an issue that needs to be debated. Current tools... do not allow for a phenomenon like hazardous drinking, when a person drinks too much and is at risk but is not alcohol dependent," Dr. Mauri Aalto, chief physician at Finland's National Public Health Institute, said in a prepared statement.

Aalto and his colleagues analyzed data on 4,477 Finns, ages 30 to 64, who took part in a national health survey in 2000 and found the prevalence of hazardous drinking was 5.8 percent.

Men were defined as hazardous drinkers if they had 24 or more standard drinks a week during the preceding year, while women were hazardous drinkers if they had 16 or more standard drinks a week.

The study also found that hazardous drinking was more common among men, people older than 40, unemployed people versus the employed, and those who were cohabitating, divorced or separated, or unmarried.

The study was published online in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research and is expected to be in the September print issue. The findings support the view that hazardous drinking is a genuine public health issue, the researchers said.

"A hazardous drinker may see many other people around him or her drinking as much as him or herself," Aalto said. "This, together with not yet experiencing any alcohol-related harm, may lead the individual to wrongly think that there is no need to reduce drinking. However, hazardous drinkers do not include alcohol dependents, who usually drink a lot more. Alcohol-dependent drinkers already have significant alcohol-related harms, and it is more difficult for them to change their drinking habits."

More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about alcohol consumption.

Gene Therapy in Rats Reduces Cocaine Use

(HealthDay News) -- Using gene therapy to increase the level of dopamine -- a pleasure-related chemical -- receptors in rats' brains reduced their desire for cocaine by 75 percent, U.S. researchers say.

Previous research by the same team at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, in Upton, N.Y., found that increasing the level of dopamine receptors reduced rats' desire for alcohol.

"By increasing dopamine D2 receptor levels, we saw a dramatic drop in these rats' interest in cocaine. This provides new evidence that low levels of dopamine D2 receptors may play an important role in not just alcoholism but in cocaine abuse as well. It also shows a potential direction for addiction therapies," study lead author Panayotis (Peter) Thanos, a neuroscientist with the Brookhaven Lab and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Laboratory of Neuroimaging, said in a prepared statement.

The study was published online April 16 in the journal Synapse and was expected to be published in the July print edition of the journal.

D2 receptors receive signals triggered by dopamine, a neurotransmitter needed to experience feelings of pleasure and reward. Without these receptors, the brain's pleasure response is blunted, according to background information in the study.

Previous research showed that chronic alcohol and drug abuse increases dopamine production. However, long-term substance abuse depletes the brain's D2 receptors and rewires the brain so that normal pleasurable activities no longer stimulate these pathways. As a result, alcohol and/or drugs are the only way to feel pleasure.

The Brookhaven Lab studies suggest that increasing levels of D2 receptors in the brain could help treat addiction to alcohol, cocaine and other drugs.

More information
The U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse has more about drug abuse and addiction.