Volkow N D, Hitzemann R, Wang G J, Fowler J S, Burr G, Pascani K, Dewey S L, Wolf A P
Medical Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973.
Am J Psychiatry. 1992 Aug;149(8):1016-22. doi: 10.1176/ajp.149.8.1016.
The extent to which cerebral dysfunction in alcoholics is related to the direct effects of alcohol in the brain rather than to indirect mechanisms and/or alcohol withdrawal remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether healthy alcoholics with no evidence of alcohol-associated complications showed changes in brain glucose metabolism.
Positron emission tomography and [18F]-fluorodeoxyglucose were used to measure regional brain metabolism. The study group consisted of 22 normal, healthy, right-handed volunteers and 22 neurologically intact, healthy, right-handed alcoholics tested 6 to 32 days after alcohol discontinuation.
Alcoholics showed significantly lower whole brain metabolism than normal control subjects. Normalization of regional metabolic values to the whole brain metabolic rate revealed that the left parietal and right frontal cortices were the most affected regions. Although the whole brain metabolic rate was correlated with the amount of time since alcohol discontinuation, the "normalized" decreases in left parietal and right frontal glucose metabolism were not.
These findings support the contribution of the direct effect of alcohol as well as alcohol withdrawal on the changes in regional brain metabolism seen in alcoholics. They also provide evidence of cerebral changes in neurologically intact healthy alcoholics.
酗酒者的大脑功能障碍在多大程度上与酒精对大脑的直接作用有关，而非与间接机制和/或戒酒反应有关，目前尚不清楚。本研究的目的是评估无酒精相关并发症迹象的健康酗酒者大脑葡萄糖代谢是否发生变化。
采用正电子发射断层扫描和[18F] - 氟脱氧葡萄糖来测量大脑区域代谢。研究组由22名正常、健康的右利手志愿者和22名神经功能正常、健康的右利手酗酒者组成，在戒酒6至32天后进行测试。
酗酒者的全脑代谢显著低于正常对照组。将区域代谢值与全脑代谢率进行归一化处理后发现，左侧顶叶和右侧额叶皮质是受影响最严重的区域。虽然全脑代谢率与戒酒时间相关，但左侧顶叶和右侧额叶葡萄糖代谢的“归一化”降低情况并非如此。
这些发现支持了酒精的直接作用以及戒酒反应对酗酒者大脑区域代谢变化的影响。它们还为神经功能正常的健康酗酒者大脑发生变化提供了证据。
