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Heavy Drinking May Change DNA, Leading to Increased Craving for Alcohol

posted by mrpg on Thursday January 31 2019, @07:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the alcohol-as-a-parasite dept.

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Binge and heavy drinking may trigger a long-lasting genetic change, resulting in an even greater craving for alcohol, according to a Rutgers-led study in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

"We found that people who drink heavily may be changing their DNA in a way that makes them crave alcohol even more," said Distinguished Professor Dipak K. Sarkar, senior author of the study and director of the Endocrine Program in the Department of Animal Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. "This may help explain why alcoholism is such a powerful addiction, and may one day contribute to new ways to treat alcoholism or help prevent at-risk people from becoming addicted."

In 2016, more than 3 million people died from the harmful use of alcohol, according a World Health Organization report. That is 5 percent of all global deaths. More than three-quarters of alcohol-caused deaths were among men. The harmful use of alcohol also caused 5.1 percent of the worldwide toll of disease and injuries.

-- submitted from IRC

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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday January 31 2019, @05:19PM (1 child)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 31 2019, @05:19PM (#794594) Journal

    I understand that they believe their hypothesis. I don't understand why you think that is wrong. People who take a hypothesis seriously generally *do* believe it.

    Now are you saying "This is really the claim of a firm confirmation of the hypothesis"? If so, I'll request some more explicit source. What it sounds to me as if they are saying is "After studying this we found these (listed) results, and guess that the cause is this particular reason." If you want more than that, you need to pay for additional studies and wait for them to finish...and that may be in process.

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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 31 2019, @06:53PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 31 2019, @06:53PM (#794647)

    It is simple correlation is not causation. There is no reason to favor their favorite interpretation of the correlation over the others...