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【medical-news】酒精有助于大脑损伤修复
Alcohol shows protective effect in head injuries
Last Updated: Monday, December 18, 2006 | 4:44 PM ET
CBC News
Alcohol use is a major risk factor in traumas but it may also help to protect people from brain injury, a Canadian study suggests.
Between one-third and one-half of all patients hospitalized with trauma are intoxicated when they're injured, but some studies on humans and animals suggest that alcohol may help keep brain injuries from worsening.
To look at the possible link, Dr. Homer Tien of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto and his colleagues studied 1,158 patients who were treated for severe brain injury from blunt trauma between 1998 and 2003. Most of the patients were involved in vehicle collisions.
Those with blood-alcohol levels up to 0.23 per cent — or nearly three times the legal driving limit of 0.08 per cent — had a 24 per cent lower chance of dying in hospital than those with a blood alcohol level of zero, the researchers found.
However, people with the highest blood alcohol concentrations had 73 per cent higher odds of dying compared with those with no alcohol in their system.
"We stress that our study only examined the role of alcohol on outcome in the post-injury phase because we examined only in-hospital deaths," Tien's team cautioned in the December issue of the Archives of Surgery.
"Overall, people are still at much greater risk of dying if they drive while intoxicated," the authors conclude. "What our study implies is that there may be a role for an alcohol-based resuscitation fluid in improving outcomes in adequately resuscitated patients with severe head injury."
Low or moderate levels of alcohol in the bloodstream may protect against brain damage that results when brain cells lack oxygen following trauma, the researchers said.
In comparison, when the team looked at 528 patients with severe torso injuries but no head injuries, blood alcohol levels were not related to survival rates.
About half of people who die from trauma pass on before they get to hospital, and the use of alcohol increases the likelihood of a severe injury.
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Brains Of Recovering Alcoholics Regenerate Surprisingly Fast
Main Category: Neurology / Neuroscience News
A new study shows that the brains of alcoholics who give up alcohol start to show signs of tissue regrowth and recovery within the first two months of abstinence.
The study is published in the online neurology journal Brain.
Scientists already know that chronic abuse of alcohol leads to brain damage which in the most part is irreversible. Long term alcohol abuse impairs brain function and metabolism, changes its structure, and reduces its size.
However, a team of researchers from Germany, Italy, UK and Switzerland have shown that some of the damage can be reversed by sustained abstinence from alcohol.
The scientists followed 15 long term alcoholics over a period of abstinence lasting nearly two months. They used various types of brain scan and computer models to find out how their brains changed during that time. They found that for the most part, their brains increased in size by as much as 2 per cent, and metabolic and psychological performance also increased, as did attention span.
One patient however showed no improvement. He had been drinking for 25 years, the longest period of alcohol drinking of the group.
An interesting point about this study is that the brain increases did not occur all over the mass of brain, but in specific areas.
Among the areas showing partial regeneration were the "superior vermis" (involved in subconscious proprioception such as hand-eye co-ordination) and the frontal lobes. The frontal lobes are the part of the brain that is well developed in humans compared to other animals; it enables us to do things like control impulses, plan, organize, co-ordinate, communicate and socialize.
Other studies of abstinence effects on the brains of alcoholics have also shown increased brain size before - but these results have mostly been explained by increase in water content or tissue hydration. This study has the scientists excited because it shows that the increased brain size is linked to real tissue growth, and in the white matter in particular (white matter comprises axons which help messages move between brain cells).
The scientists also call for more studies into what is going on when the brain recovers from alcohol toxicity since these could be useful for helping with other brain disorders.
"Manifestations of early brain recovery associated with abstinence from alcoholism."
Andreas J. Bartsch, György Homola, Armin Biller, Stephen M. Smith, Heinz-Gerd Weijers, Gerhard A. Wiesbeck, Mark Jenkinson, Nicola De Stefano, László Solymosi and Martin Bendszus.
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作者:admin@医学,生命科学 2011-03-24 21:18
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