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Sunday, October 25, 2009

Age-Related Gray Matter Shrinkage in a Treatment Naïve Actively Drinking Alcohol-Dependent Sample
Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research Early View 23 Oct 2009

We previously demonstrated, in a small sample, steeper age-related gray matter shrinkage in treatment naïve alcohol-dependent (TxN) men compared to nonalcoholic controls, but could not separate out the contributions of age and lifetime duration of alcohol use (which were highly correlated) to this effect.

In the current study, we have quadrupled the sample size and expanded it to include both men and women to try to replicate and extend the previous findings and to separate the contributions of age and alcohol use to the phenomenon.

We found greater age-related gray matter shrinkage in TxN than in controls. Partial correlation analysis showed that the effect was a function of age and not lifetime alcohol burden.

Implications of the findings are discussed in terms of their contribution toward our knowledge of differences between different subpopulations of alcoholics and in terms of their implications for the morbidity of alcohol dependence in an aging national population.


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