Reductions in Regional Cerebral Blood Flow Associated with Chronic Consumption of Alcohol

Abstract

Neurotoxic effects of habitual alcohol consumption were investigated by correlating the subjects' estimates of abstinence or frequency and amount of alcohol consumed with measurements of gray matter blood flow utilizing the 133Xe inhalation method. Two hundred and twenty-two subjects were studied, including 136 healthy subjects, 82 subjects with well-established risk factors for stroke (hypertension, hyperlipidemia, heart disease, and diabetes mellitus), and four subjects with chronic alcoholic dementia of the Wernicke-Korsakoff type. Subjects were classified according to average quantitative amounts of alcohol consumed per day, week, or month for the past five years. Comparisons of mean values for hemispheric gray matter blood flow indicated significant inverse relationships with the average amounts of alcohol consumed. This linear relationship occurred regardless of whether or not other risk factors were present and indicated that alcohol itself was a risk factor reducing gray matter blood flow and had additive effects of reducing cerebral blood flow further when combined with other risk factors. Patients who had chronic Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome had the most severely reduced blood flow levels, as might be predicted from extrapolation of the regression line comparing cerebral blood flow values with the degree of chronic alcohol consumption.

Alcohol consumption and cerebral blood flow among older adults

“…The present results are partially compatible with the only previous study examining the effects of chronic alcohol consumption on CBF (Rogers et al, 1983), which reported an inverse relationship across the range of alcohol consumption, a finding we observed only in our highest alcohol consumption group.…”

“…Whereas a number of studies have examined the effects of acute alcohol consumption on CBF in non-alcoholics (e.g., Sano et al, 1993;Volkow et al, 1998), to our knowledge, only a single study has investigated the effect of routine alcohol intake on CBF in a sober state and demonstrated an inverse relationship between alcohol consumption and gray matter blood flow (Rogers et al, 1983). One potential methodological shortcoming of the Rogers et al study is the use of the [ 133 Xe] Xenon inhalation method (Obrist et al, 1975;Obrist and Wilkinson, 1990) which is limited by low spatial resolution and less reliable quantitative measures compared to other imaging methods (Cherry and Phelps, 2002).…”

Abstinence Improves Cerebral Perfusion and Brain Volume in Alcoholic Neurotoxicity without Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome

“…Carlen et a!. (1981) and Berglund and Ingvar (1976) stressed that age-related reductions of CBP are more pro nounced in alcoholic individuals and suggested that chronic alcohol ingestion enhances the atrophic ef fects of normal aging, a conclusion supported by the present and earlier reports from this laboratory (Rogers et a!., 1983). A number of investigators have reported similarities between the results of neuropsychological tests among middle-aged alco holic subjects compared with those of older nonal coholic subjects and concluded that the neurotoxic effects of alcohol enhance normal aging (Ryan, 1982).…”

Cerebral Atrophy and Hypoperfusion Improve during Treatment of Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome

“…All patients except Case 4 (who was known to be vi tamin B] deficient and was not an alcoholic) con sumed >80 g alcohol per day, which defines them as heavy drinkers (Freund, 1973). Heiss et al (1976), Berglund and Ingvar (1976), Ingvar et al (1969), Kruger and Hoyer (1979), and Rogers et al (1983) have all reported decreased CBF in chronic alcoholic individuals without WKS.…”