Study defines brain and behavioral effects of teen binge drinking

Adolescent binge drinking can disrupt gene regulation and brain development in ways that promote anxiety and excessive drinking behaviors that can persist into adulthood, according to a new study supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health.  A report of the study, conducted in animals by researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine, appears online in the journal Neurobiology of Disease.

“These findings are an important contribution to our understanding of the alcohol-induced brain changes that make alcohol problems in adulthood more likely among young people who abuse alcohol,” said NIAAA Director George F. Koob, Ph.D.

Previous studies have shown that people who start drinking before the age of 15 are four times more likely to meet the criteria for alcohol dependence at some point in their lives, and young people consume more than 90 percent of their alcohol by binge drinking.

Researchers led by Subhash C. Pandey, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and director of neuroscience alcoholism research at the University of Illinois Chicago and a Research Career Scientist at Jesse Brown Veteran Affairs Medical Center in Chicago, investigated the effects of intermittent binge alcohol exposure during the adolescent stage of development in rats.  To model adolescent binge-drinking in humans, the researchers gave 28-day-old rats alcohol for two days in a row, followed by two days off, and repeated this pattern for 13 days. Some rats were followed into adulthood and observed for abnormal behaviors. They were offered both alcohol and water, and their alcohol-drinking behavior was monitored.