Tag: alcohol

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No ‘Beneficial’ Level of Alcohol Consumption for Dementia Risk

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Any amount of alcohol consumption may increase risk of dementia, according to the most comprehensive study of alcohol consumption and dementia risk to date.

Led by the University of Oxford, Yale University, and the University of Cambridge, the research challenges previous suggestions that light-to-moderate drinking may have a protective effect against dementia. The study is published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine.

Alcohol consumption is widespread and is linked with an increased risk of many diseases. Heavy drinking has previously been linked to higher risk of dementia. The connection between moderate levels of drinking and higher risk of dementia was uncertain with some studies suggesting that moderate drinking may even reduce dementia risk. However, recent studies involving brain scans have shown that drinking alcohol even at low levels may increase the risk of dementia.

This study combined observational data from more than half a million participants in two large and diverse population studies: the US Million Veteran Program and UK Biobank to assess whether self-reported alcohol use was linked with risk of developing a broad range of types of dementia.

The researchers also investigated links between genetically-predicted likelihood of drinking alcohol and alcohol use disorder for more than 2.4 million participants in 45 individual studies. This approach helped the researchers overcome some of the difficulties in distinguishing correlation from causation.

Key findings:

  • Observational analyses seemed to support previous findings that current low and moderate drinking is associated with lower risk of dementia when compared with non-drinking and heavy drinking; however, some current non-drinkers were previously heavy drinkers, which could account for their increased dementia risk compared to consistently low drinkers;
  • Genetic analyses, however, revealed a continuously increasing trend of higher dementia risk with greater alcohol intakes, suggesting that any level of alcohol consumption increases the risk of dementia, with no evidence that drinking alcohol may have a protective effect;
  • A doubled increase in a person’s genetically-predicted risk of alcohol use disorder was associated with a 16% higher risk of dementia, while a three times higher increase in number of alcoholic drinks per week increased the risk of dementia risk by 15%;
  • The study also showed that people who later developed dementia reduced their alcohol intake before diagnosis, another explanation for prior findings of protective effects of alcohol, rather than true benefit.

Dr Anya Topiwala, Senior Clinical Researcher at Oxford Population Health, Consultant Psychiatrist, and lead author of the study, said ‘Our findings challenge the common belief that low levels of alcohol are beneficial for brain health. Genetic evidence offers no support for a protective effect – in fact, it suggests the opposite. Even light or moderate drinking may increase the risk of dementia, indicating that reducing alcohol consumption across the population could play a significant role in dementia prevention.’

Dr Stephen Burgess, Statistician at the University of Cambridge, said ‘The random nature of genetic inheritance allows us to compare groups with higher and lower levels of alcohol drinking in a way that allows us to make conclusions that untangle the confusion between correlation and causation. Our findings do not only hold for those who have a particular genetic predisposition, but for anyone who chooses to drink, our study suggests that greater alcohol consumption leads to higher risk of dementia.’

Dr Joel Gelernter, Professor at Yale University and senior author of the study, said ‘These results, which add to our understanding of the relationship between alcohol and dementia, have clinical implications – there was a time when medical knowledge seemed to support that light drinking would be beneficial to brain health, and this work adds to the evidence that this is not correct’.

This study adds to growing evidence that alcohol use, even at moderate levels, may have no safe threshold when it comes to brain health, reinforcing the case for preventive strategies that reduce alcohol consumption in the general population.

The study, ‘Alcohol use and risk of dementia in diverse populations: evidence from cohort, case–control and Mendelian randomisation approaches‘, is published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine.

Source: Oxford University

Categories : Metabolic Disorders Substance UseTags :

GLP-1 Receptor Agonists Protect the Liver During Alcohol Consumption

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GLP-1 receptor agonists are also promising for the treatment of alcohol use disorder and alcohol-associated liver disease, as growing evidence suggests they reduce the motivation to drink alcohol. Now, surprising new findings reveal that the medications may have direct protective effects on the liver as well.

In a new study, published in npj Metabolism Health and Disease, Yale School of Medicine (YSM) researchers found that in mice, GLP-1RAs reduced an enzyme that metabolises alcohol. That, in turn, decreased the production of toxic alcohol metabolites.

“This is the first time that GLP-1 receptor agonists have been shown to regulate alcohol metabolism in the liver,” says principal investigator Wajahat Mehal, MD, professor of medicine (digestive diseases) at YSM. “If you’re taking semaglutide, then your body will likely handle alcohol differently.”

However, because these drugs slowed the metabolism of alcohol, the mice also had higher blood alcohol levels, the researchers found.

“GLP-1 receptor agonists seem to have very similar effects in mice and humans,” says Mehal. “If these results are also reproduced in humans, people using GLP-1 receptor agonists might be drinking an amount of alcohol that does not normally put them above the legal blood alcohol level, but because they are taking this drug, it does.”

Further studies in humans are needed to understand these impacts of GLP-1 receptor agonists more fully, he stresses.

GLP-1 receptor agonists decrease toxic alcohol metabolites

In the study, researchers gave mice either a GLP-1 receptor agonist or a placebo. They observed that mice receiving the medication had decreased levels of a liver enzyme known as Cyp2e1, which breaks down alcohol into a toxic metabolite called acetaldehyde.

“This is significant because alcohol itself is actually not the most toxic molecule to the liver,” explains Mehal. Rather, acetaldehyde is one of the major drivers of alcohol-related harm to the liver. “These drugs are resulting in less acetaldehyde.”

The findings suggest that not only might GLP-1 receptor agonists help the liver by acting on the brain to reduce alcohol consumption, but also through slowing metabolism of alcohol in the liver, and in turn reducing the levels of toxic metabolites.

Ongoing clinical trials are currently testing the benefits of semaglutide for people living with alcohol-induced liver disease. The study suggests that GLP-1 receptor agonists may offer greater benefits to the liver than previously thought, and that the drug may still help patients who are not abstaining from alcohol.

“Even if some individuals don’t reduce their alcohol intake while they’re on a GLP-1 receptor agonist, they will probably still have hepatic protection, because fewer toxic metabolites will be produced in the liver,” Mehal says.

GLP-1 receptor agonists increase blood alcohol concentration

In another experiment, the researchers measured blood alcohol concentrations of mice 30 minutes after giving them alcohol. They found that mice who had received a GLP-1 receptor agonist had higher blood alcohol concentrations compared to controls, and that these levels took longer to drop.

More research is needed to better understand the consequences of elevated blood alcohol levels on the rest of the body, Mehal says.

“If the liver is not metabolizing alcohol as quickly, the alcohol load could be shifted to other organs,” he poses. “Then, not only might people have a high blood alcohol level, but may also experience more cognitive effects like discoordination.”

The number of people taking these drugs is rapidly increasing—as many as one in eight adults in the U.S. have used or are currently using a GLP-1 receptor agonist. Meanwhile, about half of U.S. adults drink alcohol and 6% report drinking heavily.

As the use of these medications for a range of conditions continues to rise, it is increasingly important to study the interactions between these medications and alcohol, Mehal says.

“There already are large numbers of people who are taking GLP-1 receptor agonists and are drinking either social amounts or excess amounts of alcohol,” says Mehal. “We need to know the effects of these drugs in that setting.

Source: Yale School of Medicine

Categories : Substance UseTags :

Long-term Alcohol Use Suspends Liver Cells in Limbo, Preventing Regeneration

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Excessive alcohol consumption can disrupt the liver’s unique regenerative abilities by trapping cells in limbo between their functional and regenerative states, even after a patient stops drinking, as described in a new study from researchers at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and collaborators.

This in-between state is a result of inflammation disrupting how RNA is spliced during the protein-making process, the researchers found, providing scientists with new treatment pathways to explore for the deadly disease. The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature Communications.

The liver has a remarkable ability to regenerate itself after damage or partial removal. However, it loses that ability in patients with alcohol-associated liver disease – the leading cause of liver-related mortality worldwide, resulting in roughly 3 million deaths annually.

“We knew that the liver stops functioning and stops regenerating in patients with alcohol-related hepatitis and cirrhosis, even when a patient has discontinued consuming alcohol, but we didn’t know why,” said U. of I. biochemistry professor Auinash Kalsotra, who co-led the study with Duke University School of Medicine professor Anna Mae Diehl. “The only real life-saving treatment option once a patient reaches the liver failure stage in those diseases is transplantation. But if we understood why these livers were failing, maybe we could intervene.”

Both the Kalsotra and Diehl labs havestudied the molecular and cellular underpinnings of liver regeneration. Over the last five years, they found that in order to regenerate, liver cells reprogram their gene expression to revert to fetal-like progenitor cells, multiply and then reverse the process back to become mature functioning cells again. Armed with this knowledge, the group turned to the question of how those mechanisms were disrupted in alcohol-associated liver disease.

The researchers compared samples of healthy livers and samples of livers with alcohol-associated hepatitis or cirrhosis obtained from Johns Hopkins University Hospital through an initiative supported by the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the National Institutes of Health.

The first thing the researchers noticed in diseased livers was that, although damaged cells had begun the process of reverting to the regenerative state, they did not complete the process and instead remained in transitional limbo.

“They are neither functional adult cells nor proliferative progenitor cells. Since they are not functioning, more pressure builds on the remaining cells. So they try to regenerate, and they’re all ending up in this unproductive quasi-progenitor state, and that’s what is causing liver failure,” said U. of I. graduate students Ullas Chembazhi and Sushant Bangru, the co-first authors of the study.

To figure out why the cells were getting stuck in this state, the team investigated which proteins were being made by the liver cells and, in turn, the RNA molecules carrying the instructions for those proteins from the DNA to the cell’s protein-building machinery.

While most studies focus only on the total amounts of RNA or protein in a cell, Kalsotra’s team used deep RNA sequencing technology and computational analyses to zoom in on the splicing of RNA fragments, a key step in stitching together different parts of genetic instructions to make proteins.

“In comparing the samples, we saw RNA was getting mis-spliced broadly in alcohol-related liver disease, across thousands of genes, and it was affecting major functions of proteins,” said Kalsotra.

The researchers found a possible driver of the RNA mis-splicing: Alcohol-damaged liver cells had a deficiency of the protein ESRP2, which binds to RNA to splice it properly.  

“Proteins function at a very specific place in the cell, and that is directed by sequences within the protein that take the protein to that particular spot. We found that, in many cases, the sequence that dictates where the protein localizes within a cell was mis-spliced. That’s why it was important that we did the multiple analyses we did,” said Kalsotra. “There was the same amount of RNA and protein, but the protein was not at the right place to function. Due to mis-splicing, key proteins that are required for productive liver regeneration were getting stuck in the cytoplasm, when they needed to be in the nucleus.”

To verify that ESRP2 deficiency was a likely culprit, the researchers studied mice without the gene that produces ESRP2. They displayed similar liver damage and regeneration failure to that seen in patients with advanced alcohol-related hepatitis.

But why was ESRP2 missing from liver cells from patients with alcohol-related hepatitis? Upon investigation, the researchers found that liver support cells and immune cells, drawn to the liver tissue damaged by alcohol processing, released high amounts of inflammatory and growth factors. Those factors suppress ESRP2 production and activity.

To verify this finding, the researchers treated liver cell cultures with a molecule that inhibits the receptor for one of the inflammation-promoting factors. ESRP2 levels recovered and splicing activity was corrected, pointing to the pathway as a possible treatment target.

“I’m hopeful these findings will become a launching pad for future clinical studies. We can use these mis-spliced RNAs as diagnostic markers or develop treatments that can curb the inflammation. And if we can correct the splicing defects, then maybe we can improve recovery and restore damaged livers,” Kalsotra said.

Source: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Categories : Substance Use Surgeries & ProceduresTags :

Alcohol Withdrawal Syndrome is a Hidden Surgery Risk

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Alcohol withdrawal syndrome (AWS) is a potentially life-threatening condition that may complicate patients’ recovery after surgery.

Previous studies have estimated that up to 50% of hospitalised patients with AUD will develop some degree of AWS. Up to 7% of these patients may progress to severe withdrawal, including delirium tremens (DT) that can range in severity from irritability and confusion to tremors, nausea, vomiting and seizures.

A new study by surgeons at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James) looked at a national sample of 3 million adult surgical patients between 2016-2019.

Of those patients, 16 504 (0.5%) were diagnosed with AWS, including 6591 (0.2%) with DT. 

“We found that alcohol withdrawal syndrome is linked with poorer surgical outcomes, extended hospitalisations and increased costs. These findings underscore the need for standardised perioperative screening and targeted management strategies to reduce these risks,” said study lead author Timothy Pawlik, MD, PhD, professor and chair of Ohio State’s Department of Surgery.

The study findings were published in the Journal of American College of Surgeons.

Patients with AWS were generally younger, male and more likely to have Medicaid, according to Pawlik, who holds the Urban Meyer III and Shelley Meyer Chair for Cancer Research at The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

AWS raises the risk of postoperative complications, especially respiratory failure and sepsis. The study found that patients with AWS had longer hospital stays (median 11 vs 6 days) and higher costs ($44 300 vs $28 800). 

AWS was associated with a $10 030 higher adjusted hospitalisation cost per patient undergoing surgical care, contributing to an overall excess cost of $165.6 million, said study first author Azza Sarfraz, MBBS, a surgical oncology fellow at Ohio State. 

“The lack of standard screening delays early detection and intervention,” Pawlik said. “Developing strategies for early identification, inpatient withdrawal management, and perioperative risk stratification may improve surgical outcomes, lower healthcare costs, and enhance patient care.” 

Source: Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center

Categories : NeurologyTags :

Eight or More Drinks per Week Linked to Signs of Injury in the Brain

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Heavy drinkers who have eight or more alcoholic drinks per week have an increased risk of brain lesions called hyaline arteriolosclerosis, signs of brain injury that are associated with memory and thinking problems, according to a study published on April 9, 2025, online in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN).

Hyaline arteriolosclerosis is a condition that causes the small blood vessels to narrow, becoming thick and stiff. This makes it harder for blood to flow, which can damage the brain over time. It appears as lesions, areas of damaged tissue in the brain.

“Heavy alcohol consumption is a major global health concern linked to increased health problems and death,” said study author Alberto Fernando Oliveira Justo, PhD, of University of Sao Paulo Medical School in Brazil. “We looked at how alcohol affects the brain as people get older. Our research shows that heavy alcohol consumption is damaging to the brain, which can lead to memory and thinking problems.”

The study included 1781 people who had an average age of 75 at death. All had brain autopsies. Researchers examined brain tissue to look for signs of brain injury including tau tangles and hyaline arteriolosclerosis. They also measured brain weight and the height of each participant. Family members answered questions about participants’ alcohol consumption. Researchers then divided the participants into four groups: 965 people who never drank, 319 moderate drinkers who had seven or fewer drinks per week; 129 heavy drinkers who had eight or more drinks per week; and 368 former heavy drinkers.

Researchers defined one drink as having 14 grams of alcohol, which is about 350mL of beer, 150mL of wine or 45mL of distilled spirits. Of those who never drank, 40% had vascular brain lesions. Of the moderate drinkers, 45% had vascular brain lesions. Of the heavy drinkers, 44% had vascular brain lesions. Of the former heavy drinkers, 50% had vascular brain lesions.

After adjusting for factors that could affect brain health such as age at death, smoking and physical activity, heavy drinkers had 133% higher odds of having vascular brain lesions compared to those who never drank, former heavy drinkers had 89% higher odds and moderate drinkers, 60%.

Researchers also found heavy and former heavy drinkers had higher odds of developing tau tangles, a biomarker associated with Alzheimer’s disease, with 41% and 31% higher odds, respectively. Former heavy drinking was associated with a lower brain mass ratio, a smaller proportion of brain mass compared to body mass, and worse cognitive abilities.

No link was found between moderate or heavy drinking and brain mass ratio or cognitive abilities. Justo noted that, in addition to brain injuries, impaired cognitive abilities were observed only in former drinkers. Researchers also found that heavy drinkers died an average of 13 years earlier than those who never drank.

“We found heavy drinking is directly linked to signs of injury in the brain, and this can cause long-term effects on brain health, which may impact memory and thinking abilities,” said Justo. “Understanding these effects is crucial for public health awareness and continuing to implement preventive measures to reduce heavy drinking.”

A limitation of the study was that it did not look at participants before death and did not have information on the duration of alcohol consumption and cognitive abilities.

Source: American Academy of Neurology

Categories : Diet and NutritionTags :

Is Red Wine a Healthier Choice than White Wine? Uncorking the Cancer Risks

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Epidemiologists in the School of Public Health conducted a meta-analysis to assess whether red wine protects against cancer, comparing the cancer risks of red wine vs. white wine. It is published in the journal Nutrients.

Alcohol – specifically, the ethanol in alcoholic beverages – metabolises into compounds that damage DNA and proteins, contributing to cancer risk. In 2020, excessive alcohol consumption was linked to more than 740 000 cancer cases worldwide, accounting for 4.1% of all cases.

Despite the classification of alcoholic beverages as Group 1 carcinogens, meaning they are carcinogenic to humans, a common perception is that not all alcoholic beverages are alike. Red wine, in particular, is often considered a healthier choice, and its consumption is on the rise. The popularity of red wine may stem from the widespread belief that its high resveratrol content, an antioxidant with anti-inflammatory properties, offers protective effects against cancer.

Researchers from the Brown University School of Public Health have conducted a study that scours “the vast and often contradictory literature on the carcinogenicity of red and white wine” to assess whether this assumption holds up, and to compare the cancer risks associated with wine type.

“In an effort to better understand the potential impact of wine consumption on cancer risk, we conducted a comprehensive meta-analysis to assess whether red wine is truly a healthier choice than white wine,” said Eunyoung Cho, co-lead author of the study and associate professor of epidemiology and of dermatology at Brown. “Our analysis included as many published epidemiological studies as possible that separately explored the relationship between red and white wine consumption and cancer risk.”

Analyzing 42 observational studies (20 cohort and 22 case-control) involving nearly 96,000 participants, Cho and her team found no overall increased cancer risk from wine consumption, regardless of type. However, they also found no clear evidence that red wine mitigates cancer risk.

Paradoxically, when focusing on cohort studies that follow participants over a long period of time, researchers found that white wine is associated with a 22% increased risk of skin cancer compared to red wine intake.

“The results of our meta-analysis revealed no significant difference in cancer risk between red and white wine overall,” Cho said. “However, we did observe a distinction when it came to skin cancer risk. Specifically, the consumption of white wine, but not red wine, was associated with an increased risk of skin cancer.”

The reasons for this are indeterminate. Researchers suggest that heavy consumption of wine may correlate to high-risk behaviors, such as indoor tanning and inadequate sunscreen use. However, it is unclear why white wine, in particular, is the culprit. 

In an additional twist, the study also found a stronger association between white wine intake and increased overall cancer risk among women. This finding warrants further investigations into potential underlying mechanisms.

The meta-analysis, the first study of its kind, challenges the belief that red wine is healthier than white. It also points to the need for further study into the association between white wine consumption and cancer risk, particularly in women.

Source: Brown University

Categories : Substance UseTags :

Long Ring Fingers are Associated with a Preference for Alcohol

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People’s finger lengths may hold a vital clue to their drinking habits, a new study suggests. There is evidence that alcohol consumption is influenced by prenatal sex steroids – so experts from Swansea University and colleagues from the Medical University of Lodz decided to use a sample of students for their research into the subject.

Their findings, published in the American Journal of Human Biology, revealed relationships between high alcohol consumption and long 4th  digits (ring fingers) relative to 2nd  digits (index fingers). This showed that high prenatal testosterone relative to oestrogen is linked to high student alcohol consumption.

Professor John Manning said: “Alcohol consumption is a major social and economic problem. Therefore, it is important to understand why alcohol use shows considerable differences across individuals.”

The study used a sample of 258 participants – 169 of them female  –  and it revealed consumption rates varied between the sexes. In comparison to women, men show higher alcohol consumption and higher mortality from alcohol abuse.

He said: “A pattern like this suggests an involvement of sex hormones, such as testosterone and oestrogen. Digit ratio (2D:4D: the relative lengths of the 2nd and 4th fingers) is thought to be an index of early testosterone (long 4th digit) and oestrogen (long 2nd digit).

“It is known that alcohol-dependent patients have very long 4th digits relative to their 2nd digits, suggesting high testosterone relative to oestrogen exposure before birth. As expected, the associations were stronger for men than women.”

Now the researchers hope their conclusions will bring a better understanding of the factors underlying the pattern of alcohol consumption, from abstinence to occasional use to harmful dependence. 

This is the latest paper which has highlighted Professor Manning’s work in the field of digit ratios. Previous research  has examined how digit ratio may provide vital information concerning outcomes after contracting Covid-19, as well as oxygen consumption in footballers.

Source: University of Swansea

Categories : Cardiovascular DiseaseTags :

Research at Oktoberfest Reveals a Brewing Cardiac Arrhythmia Risk

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Medicine is subjecting the negative effects of alcohol on body and health to ever greater scrutiny – not surprisingly us, as alcohol is one of the strongest cell toxins that exist. In a recent study, doctors at  took mobile ECG monitors along to parties of young people who had one principal aim: to drink and be merry. Yet the science produced by the MunichBREW II study made for sobering reading. It revealed that binge drinking can have a concerning effect on the hearts even of healthy young people in surprisingly many cases, including the development of clinically relevant arrhythmias. The results of the study have just been published in the European Heart Journal.

The team from the Department of Cardiology at LMU University Hospital launched the MunichBREW I study at Munich Oktoberfest in 2015. Back then, the doctors, led by Professor Stefan Brunner and PD Dr Moritz Sinner, studied the connection between excessive alcohol consumption and cardiac arrhythmias – but only through an electrocardiogram (ECG) snapshot.

Now the scientists wanted to gain a more detailed picture, so they set out with their mobile equipment once again. Their destinations were various small parties attended by young adults with a high likelihood “that many of the partygoers would reach breath alcohol concentrations (BAC) of at least 1.2 grams per kilogram,” says Stefan Brunner. These were the participants of the MunichBREW II study – the world’s largest investigation to date of acute alcohol consumption and ECG changes in prolonged ECGs spanning several days.

Hearts out of sync – especially in recovery phase

Overall, the researchers evaluated the data of over 200 partygoers who, with peak blood alcohol values of up to 2.5 grams per kilogram, had imbibed quite a few drinks. The ECG devices monitored their cardiac rhythms for a total of 48 hours, with the researchers distinguishing between the baseline (hour 0), the drinking period (hours 1-5), the recovery period (hours 6-19), and two control periods corresponding to 24 hours after the drinking and recovery periods, respectively. Acute alcohol intake was monitored by BAC measurements during the drinking period. ECGs were analysed for heart rate, heart rate variability, atrial fibrillation, and other types of cardiac arrhythmia. Despite the festive mood of the study participants, the quality of the ECGs was almost universally high throughout.

“Clinically relevant arrhythmias were detected in over five percent of otherwise healthy participants,” explains Moritz Sinner, “and primarily in the recovery phase.” Alcohol intake during the drinking period led to an increasingly rapid pulse of over 100 beats per minute. Alcohol, it would seem, can profoundly affect the autonomous regulatory processes of the heart. “Our study furnishes, from a cardiological perspective, another negative effect of acute excessive alcohol consumption on health,” stresses Brunner. Meanwhile, the long-term harmful effects of alcohol-related cardiac arrhythmias on cardiac health remains a subject for further research.

Source: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Categories : Addiction Mental HealthTags :

Unhealthy Commodities – Like Alcohol and Social Media – are Connected with Poor Mental Health

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Commercial determinants such as social media, air pollution associated with depression and suicide

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“Unhealthy commodities” such as tobacco, alcohol, ultra-processed foods, social media, and fossil fuels, as well as impacts of fossil fuel consumption such as climate change and air pollution are associated with depression, suicide, and self-harm, according to a study published August 28 by Kate Dun-Campbell from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and colleagues.

Globally, around one out of every eight people currently live with a mental health disorder. These disorders – including depression, suicide, anxiety, and other diseases and disorders – can have many underlying causes. Some of those causes could be related to commercial determinants of health – the ways in which commercial activities and commodities impact health and equity. Commercial determinants of health can be specifically unhealthy, such as alcohol or tobacco consumption, unhealthy food, and the use of fossil fuels. To further understand how these unhealthy commodities might impact mental health, the authors of this study performed an umbrella synthesis of 65 review studies examining connections between six specific commodities – tobacco, alcohol, ultra-processed foods, gambling, social media, and fossil fuels. The author also included studies looking at mental health impacts of fossil fuel use such as climate change and air pollution.

The umbrella review found evidence for links between depression and alcohol, tobacco, gambling, social media, ultra-processed foods and air pollution. Alcohol, tobacco, gambling, social media, climate change and air pollution were associated with suicide, and social media was also associated with self-harm. Climate change and air pollution were also linked to anxiety. The review brought together many different methodologies and measurements, and could not establish the underlying cause of the negative mental health outcomes. But the results indicate that unhealthy commodities should be considered when researchers attempt to understand and improve mental ill health. 

The authors add: “Our review highlights that there is already compelling evidence of the negative impact of unhealthy products on mental health, despite key gaps in understanding the impact of broader commercial practices.”

The study was published in PLOS Global Health.

Provided by PLOS

Categories : Addiction Diet and NutritionTags :

Removing Largest Serving Sizes of Wine Decreases Alcohol Consumption, Study Finds

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When pubs, bars and restaurants in England removed their largest size of wine sold by the glass, consumers drank less alcohol

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Alcohol consumption is the fifth largest contributor to premature death and disease globally. Many cues in physical and economic environments influence alcohol consumption across populations. One proposed intervention to excessive alcohol consumption is reducing the size of servings of alcoholic drinks sold by the glass, but there has been no real-world evidence for the effectiveness of this.

In the new study, researchers asked 21 licensed premises in England to remove from their menus their largest serving of wine by the glass – usually 250mL – for four weeks. The researchers then tracked the total volume of wine, beer and cider sold by each establishment.

Over the course of the four weeks, the total volume of wine sold by the licensed premises decreased by 7.6%, and there was no overall increase in beer and cider sales. There was an increase in the sales of smaller servings of wine by the glass – generally 125mL and 175mL – but no impact on sales of wine by the bottle or beer or cider sales.

“This suggests that this is a promising intervention for decreasing alcohol consumption across populations, which merits consideration as part of alcohol licensing regulations,” the authors say.

Marteau adds, “Removing the largest serving size of wine by the glass in 21 licensed premises reduced the volume of wine sold, in keeping with the wealth of research showing smaller serving sizes reduce how much we eat. This could become a novel intervention to improve population health by reducing how much we drink.”