Another Reason Not to Drink Too Much

Because white-matter changes occur with excessive alcohol use, investigators in Germany used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to study white-matter microstructural integrity before and during abstinence in both animals and humans.

In 91 men with alcohol use disorder who had entered a clinical treatment program, the researchers found multiple changes in white-matter microstructure, compared with 36 healthy controls. The changes preferentially affected the right hemisphere and frontal regions and were accompanied by reduced volume of white-matter tracts. These changes were proportional to alcohol consumption prior to treatment and continued to increase over ≤6 weeks of abstinence. Similar changes developed in 27 rats who had ingested large amoun…