Binge Drinking's Swift Toll
Mon Apr 15, 2002 7:14 PM ET By Robert Preidt
HealthScoutNews Reporter

MONDAY, April 15 (HealthScoutNews) -- All you college students planning year-end keg parties should know this -- just one round of binge drinking can damage your brain.

A new animal study is the first to show that brain damage actually occurs during binge drinking, says study author Fulton T. Crews, director of the University of North Carolina's Center for Alcohol Studies.

Much of the previous research on alcohol-related brain damage suggested the damage occurred when someone stopped drinking and then went through withdrawal, Crews says. The previous studies looked at humans who'd been alcoholic for decades, or rats treated with alcohol for much longer periods of time.

The North Carolina study included 120 rats. Eighty of the rats were given a dose of alcohol through a catheter once every eight hours for four consecutive days. The amount they received was equivalent to a human having 10 drinks in one day. The other 40 rats, which served as a control group, were given a non-alcoholic liquid.

The rats that received the alcohol had damage to their olfactory bulb, which is responsible for smell, that could be detected within two days, and had significant damage to other parts of their brains after four days of drinking, Crews says.

Some of the rats' brains were examined after two days of alcohol consumption, some after four days, and others after four days of alcohol and three days of withdrawal. Their brain cells were studied using several different staining methods, as well as electron microscopy.

Using a number of different methods to determine alcohol's effect on the brain cells was essential in confirming the rapid damage, Crews says.

The study appears in today's edition of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

While the study examined rats, Crews says it should serve as a warning to anyone who believes the occasional bender is a harmless bit of fun.

"I think there is greater danger [for people] because the human brain is much bigger and much more complicated than a rat brain," Crews says.

He notes that a rat's olfactory bulb, damaged after just two days of heavy drinking, is comparable to the part of the human brain called the frontal cortex, which is involved with judgment and decision-making.

This rapid brain damage may help to explain why some people go from casual drinker to alcoholic, says Crews, who has ongoing studies looking into the connection.

"Alcohol does help people interact by reducing inhibitions. That can be very rewarding for people," Crews says.

However, as these people become more reliant on alcohol to socialize, the price may be brain damage, he says.

"I think that process is a progressive degeneration of the brain, of parts of the brain that are important for motivation, for long-term cognitive evaluation of what in one's life is rewarding -- like family, career and social activities," Crews says.

One expert on alcohol-related brain damage says the North Carolina study provides important new evidence about how quickly heavy drinking can harm the brain.

"It shows you that the damage that we knew occurs in a rather prolonged binge of four or five days actually, to some extent in at least a part of the brain, is happening after only a couple of days," says Michael A. Collins, professor of cellular and molecular biochemistry at Loyola University in Chicago.

What To Do

Approximately 14 million Americans, or one in 13, are alcoholic or abuse alcohol, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). The institute says 53 percent of adult Americans say they have a close relative with a drinking problem.

For more information about alcoholism, visit the NIAAA or Alcoholics Anonymous.