Reductions in Regional Cerebral Blood Flow Associated with Chronic Consumption of Alcohol

Abstract

Neurotoxic effects of habitual alcohol consumption were investigated by correlating the subjects'' estimates of abstinence or frequency and amount of alcohol consumed with measurements of gray matter blood flow utilizing the 133Xe inhalation method. Patients (222) were studied, including 136 healthy subjects, 82 subjects with well-established risk factors for stroke (hypertension, hyperlipidemia, heart disease, and diabetes mellitus) and 4 subjects with chronic alcoholic dementia of the Wernicke-Korsakoff type. Subjects were classified according to average quantitative amounts of alcohol consumed per day, week or month for the past 5 yr. Comparisons of mean values for hemispheric gray matter blood flow indicated significant inverse relationships with the average amounts of alcohol consumed. This linear relationship occurred regardless of whether or not other risk factors were present and indicated that alcohol itself was a risk factor reducing gray matter blood flow and had additive effects of reducing cerebral blood flow further when combined with other risk factors. Patients who had chronic Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome had the most severely reduced blood flow levels, as might be predicted from extrapolation of the regression line comparing cerebral blood flow values with the degree of chronic alcohol consumption.