Munro C A, Saxton J, Butters M A
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, Pennsylvania, USA.
Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2000 Oct;24(10):1510-6.
The older alcoholic has been distinguished from the younger alcoholic with regard to both the acute effects of alcohol and also the recovery of functioning with abstinence. Few studies, however, have included samples of exclusively older subjects. In this investigation we examined the recovery of functioning in an older cohort of recovering alcoholics (age range 55-83) to determine which neuropsychological functions improve and which remain impaired with abstinence.
We used a cross-sectional design, comparing three demographically matched groups on a battery of neuropsychological tests: (a) older alcoholics who had been abstinent for greater than 6 months, (b) older alcoholics who had been abstinent for less than 6 months, and (c) a control group of older subjects without alcohol abuse histories.
In almost all tasks, the alcoholics who were abstinent for less than 6 months performed worse than the control group. In contrast, the alcoholics who had been abstinent for more than 6 months differed from the control group on learning and recall of a word list, immediate and delayed recall of a complex figure, initial letter fluency, and clock drawing.
Memory and executive skills appear to be resistant to recovery or at least slower to recover with abstinence in the older alcoholic. The impairment with visuospatial skills reported in prior investigations of alcoholics may be related to compromised executive functions, which interfere with the encoding of more complex visuospatial information and thus affect recall of such information. Studies that involve larger samples of older alcoholics are needed to understand their ability to recover cognitive functioning with abstinence.
老年酗酒者在酒精的急性影响以及戒酒恢复功能方面与年轻酗酒者有所不同。然而，很少有研究仅纳入老年受试者样本。在本调查中，我们研究了一组老年戒酒者（年龄范围55 - 83岁）的功能恢复情况，以确定哪些神经心理功能在戒酒后得到改善，哪些仍然受损。
我们采用横断面设计，在一系列神经心理测试中比较三组人口统计学匹配的人群：（a）戒酒超过6个月的老年酗酒者，（b）戒酒少于6个月的老年酗酒者，以及（c）无酗酒史的老年对照组。
在几乎所有任务中，戒酒少于6个月的酗酒者表现比对照组差。相比之下，戒酒超过6个月的酗酒者在单词列表的学习和回忆、复杂图形的即时和延迟回忆、首字母流畅性以及画钟测试方面与对照组存在差异。
在老年酗酒者中，记忆和执行技能似乎对恢复有抵抗力，或者至少在戒酒后恢复较慢。先前对酗酒者的调查中报告的视觉空间技能损害可能与执行功能受损有关，这会干扰更复杂视觉空间信息的编码，从而影响此类信息的回忆。需要开展涉及更大样本老年酗酒者的研究，以了解他们戒酒后恢复认知功能的能力。
