For some time, researchers have believeD high alcohol intake causes reduced white and gray matter in the brain.
But now a team from Washington University in St. Louis and Duke University have conducted a study that finds it may be genetic makeup that is to blame for both reduced brain volume and a predisposition toward consuming high quantities of alcohol.
Years ago, a team at Indiana University School of Medicine, led by T.K. Li, who went on to become director of the National Institute on Alcoholism & Alcohol Abuse, was able to successfully breed 12 generations of alcoholic rats, thereby demonstrating the link between genetics and alcohol consumption.
This new study is significant because it uses a variety of approaches and data analysis to conclude that it’s lower brain volume in specific regions of the brain that may predispose a person to greater alcohol consumption.
“These findings don’t discount the hypothesis that alcohol abuse may further reduce gray matter volumes, but it does suggest that brain volumes started out lower to begin with,” lead author David Baranger said.
“As a result,” he adds, “brain volumes may also serve as useful biological markers for gene variations linked to increased vulnerability for alcohol consumption.”
“Taken alongside evidence that heavy alcohol consumption induces gray matter volume reductions, our data raise the intriguing possibility that genetically-conferred reductions in regional gray matter volumes may promote alcohol use from adolescence to young adulthood, which may, in turn, lead to accelerated atrophy within these and other regions,” the study, which appears in Biological Psychiatry concludes.