title: Alcohol consumption and premotor corpus callosum in older adults.
abstract: Heavy alcohol consumption is toxic to the brain, especially to the frontal white matter (WM), but whether lesser amounts of alcohol negatively impact the brain WM is unclear. In this study, we examined the relationship between self-reported alcohol consumption and regional WM and grey matter (GM) volume in fifty-six men and thirty-seven women (70+- 7years) cognitively intact participants of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA) with no history of alcohol abuse. We used regional analysis of volumes examined in normalized space (RAVENS) maps methodology for WM and GM segmentation and normalization followed by voxel based morphometry (VBM) implemented in SPM8 to examine the cross-sectional association between alcohol consumption and regional WM (and, separately, GM) volume controlling for age, sex, smoking, blood pressure and dietary thiamine intake. WM VBM revealed that in men, but not in women, higher alcohol consumption was associated with lower volume in premotor frontal corpus callosum. This finding suggests that even moderate amounts of alcohol may be detrimental to corpus callosum and white matter integrity.
authors.affiliation: National Institute on Aging/National Institutes of Health (NIA/NIH), Clinical Research Branch, 3001 South Hanover St., Baltimore, MD 21225, USA. kapogiannisd@mail.nih.gov
authors.forename: Dimitrios
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kapogiannis
authors.forename: Jason
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kisser
authors.forename: Christos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Davatzikos
authors.forename: Luigi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ferrucci
authors.forename: Jeffrey
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Metter
authors.forename: Susan M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Resnick
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000009:adverse effects* / Q000473:pathology*; D019973:Alcohol-Related Disorders / Q000473:pathology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D015142:Baltimore; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003337:Corpus Callosum / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D059906:Neuroimaging; D009929:Organ Size; D009928:Organ Specificity; D057566:Self Report; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012727:Sex Characteristics