WESTPORT, CT (Reuters Health) Nov 15 – Abstinence from alcohol can reverse some of the structural brain damage that occurs with chronic alcohol abuse, researchers report.
Their study findings indicate that the brain is frontal lobes recovered some of their lost weight after an average of 2 years of abstinence. Previous studies have shown that this area is highly susceptible to alcoholic brain damage.
«These results suggest reversal of structural abnormalities in some brain regions of abstinent alcoholics and persistent structural damage in other brain regions,» the study is lead author Dr. Dieter J. Meyerhoff, from the University of California, San Francisco, said in a statement. «We still need to learn, however, what this means for the individual is brain function.»
Dr. Meyerhoff and colleagues report their findings in the November issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
The researchers used brain-imaging techniques to compare alcohol-related tissue damage in a group of 8 heavy drinkers and a group of 12 recovering alcoholics. The recovering alcoholics had not had a drink for 2 years.
According to the study findings, recovering alcoholics had a greater volume of white matter, the fibers connecting cells, in their frontal lobes but not in other areas of the brain. The longer individuals remained abstinent, the greater their white matter volume.
Abstinent alcoholics also had less scarring of white matter in most areas of the brain and a higher average volume of gray matter in some parts of the frontal lobes.
The findings suggest that recovering alcoholics can at least partially reverse some of the brain damage that occurs after years of alcohol abuse if they refrain from drinking over the long term, Dr. Edith V. Sullivan, an associate professor of psychiatry at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, told Reuters Health. These data, she added, support the results of other research demonstrating improvements in mental and motor functioning over time with abstinence.
«Taken together, these findings present hopeful data for recovering alcoholics and should provide encouragement for continued sobriety,» Dr. Sullivan said.
Still, studies tracking alcoholics from the early days of detoxification through periods of sobriety and relapse are needed, she added.
