Alcohol Health & Research World articles from December 1998

Alcohol Health & Research World archives from December 1998

Introduction to alcohol withdrawal.
December 22, 1998... Every year more than one-and-a-half million people in the United States either enter alcoholism treatment or are admitted to a general hospital because of medical consequences resulting from alcohol dependence. These patients, as well as a...

Neurochemical mechanisms underlying alcohol withdrawal. (includes related article on preventing relapse)
December 22, 1998... During the past 25 years researchers have made rapid progress in understanding the chemical activities that occur in the nervous system (i.e., the neurochemistry) during alcohol withdrawal (AW), primarily from experiments using animal models of...

Kindling in alcohol withdrawal.
December 22, 1998... Alcohol dependence and alcohol abuse frequently involve drinking patterns in which bouts of heavy drinking (i.e., binge drinking) are interspersed with periods of abstinence. During the binge-drinking episode, the body, particularly the brain,...

Electrophysiological changes after repeated alcohol withdrawal.
December 22, 1998... The chronic use of alcohol and other drugs leads to adaptive changes in the brain that serve to counteract the effects of the continuous presence of the "offending" drug. When the drug is subsequently withheld, these changes result in...

Treatment of alcohol withdrawal.
December 22, 1998... Symptoms of alcohol withdrawal (AW) may range in severity from mild tremors to massive convulsions (e.g., withdrawal seizures). Mild AW can cause pain and suffering; severe AW can be life-threatening. The goals of AW treatment are to relieve...

An overview of outpatient and inpatient detoxification.
December 22, 1998... Alcohol detoxification can be defined as a period of medical treatment, usually including counseling, during which a person is helped to overcome physical and psychological dependence on alcohol (Chang and Kosten 1997). The immediate objectives...

Fetal alcohol syndrome: does alcohol withdrawal play a role?
December 22, 1998... A woman who drinks alcoholic beverages during pregnancy exposes not only herself but also her fetus to alcohol. Alcohol readily crosses the placenta; consequently, the blood alcohol levels (BAL's) of the fetus are similar to those of the...

Alcohol hangover: mechanisms and mediators.
December 22, 1998... The British writer William Hickey wrote these words in the year 1768, vividly describing the aftermath of a bout of heavy alcohol drinking - an experience commonly referred to as a "hangover." Similar descriptions of hangovers appear in the...

Complications of alcohol withdrawal: pathophysiological insights.
December 22, 1998... Abrupt reduction or total cessation of long-term alcohol consumption produces a well-defined cluster of symptoms called acute alcohol withdrawal (AW). Although some patients experience relatively mild withdrawal symptoms, disease processes or...

Disturbances of the stress response: the role of the HPA axis during alcohol withdrawal and abstinence. (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal)(includes related article on the physiological effects of cortisol)
December 22, 1998... Stress is a ubiquitous and unavoidable experience of daily life whether it arises from the external environment (e.g., a job interview or traffic accident) or from within the body (e.g., an infection or a panic attack). The body has powerful...

Prevalence, trends, and incidence of alcohol withdrawal symptoms: analysis of general population and clinical samples.
December 22, 1998... The presence of alcohol withdrawal symptoms is an important indicator of serious addiction to alcohol and serves as one of the diagnostic criteria for alcohol dependence according to the World Health Organization's International Classification...