Alcohol consumption and frontal lobe shrinkage: study of 1432 non-alcoholic subjects.
OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the influences of chronic alcohol consumption on brain volume among social drinkers, as it is well known that alcohol misusers have a high risk of brain shrinkage.


METHODS
Frontal lobe volumes on MRI were compared with the current alcohol habits of consecutive 1432 non-alcoholic subjects.


RESULTS
After adjusting for other variables, age was found to be the most powerful promoting factor for the shrinkage with a odds ratio of 2.8 (95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.23-3.06) for each 10 years of age. Regarding alcohol habit, 667 of the subjects were abstainers, and 157, 362, and 246 of the subjects were light (average 88.2 g ethanol/week), moderate (181.2 g/week), and heavy (418.1 g/week) drinkers, respectively. Moderate alcohol consumption did not increase the incidence of frontal lobe shrinkage (odds ratio 0.98; 95% CI 0.73-1.33), whereas heavy drinkers were at a higher risk compared with abstainers (1.80; 1.32-2.46). The contributory rate of alcohol consumption for frontal lobe shrinkage was 11.3%.


CONCLUSIONS
The brain tends to shrink physiologically with age. Heavy alcohol consumption seems to exaggerate this shrinkage in social drinkers. Moderate alcohol consumption does not seem to affect brain volume.
Kubota
M
M
Department Neurosurgery, Chiba University School of Medicine, Inohana 1-8-1, Chuo-ku, Chiba-shi, Chiba, 260-8670 Japan. kubota@med.m.chiba-u.ac.uk
Nakazaki
S
S
Hirai
S
S
Saeki
N
N
Yamaura
A
A
Kusaka
T
T
D000328:Adult; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000473:pathology*; D001284:Atrophy / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged