Even young, healthy adults may be at risk of biological changes linked to chronic illness if they engage in drinking, according to a new study by Brown researchers.
The study characterized participants as either light or heavy drinkers and evaluated how low or moderate doses of alcohol could impact biological markers levels in the body. Researchers found that heavy drinkers had elevated biomarkers that indicate changed vascular and metabolic activity.
The team did not find many differences in biomarker levels due to the amount of alcohol participants consumed in the lab — rather, participants’ past drinking history was most clearly linked to differences in biomarkers, according to Mollie Monnig, associate professor of behavioral and social sciences and first author on the paper.
“I was surprised at how many differences we just found as a function of lighter drinker versus heavy drinker,” Monnig told The Herald.
Participants in the study were brought into the lab and consumed either a placebo, low-dose or moderate-dose alcoholic drink. Researchers took blood samples at five different points and used an immunoassay system to test for biomarkers, Monnig explained. Those biomarkers mapped to five different categories of risk factors for chronic diseases.
Samantha Clark GS, an author on the paper, said that accounting for the heavy or light drinking variable allows researchers to see if “people’s bodies respond differently to alcohol acutely.”
While the study’s heavy drinkers met National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism standards for excessive alcohol use, Monnig said their drinking was not particularly heavy by clinical standards.
To be classified as a heavy drinker, female participants had to have had more than seven alcoholic beverages per week or five episodes of drinking four or more drinks during a four-week period. Male participants had to have at least 14 drinks per week or five episodes of consuming five or more drinks.
Monnig explained that there are a lot of studies that look at the effects of alcohol on rodent models or clinical trials that focus on analyzing the biomarkers of heavy drinkers. But there are “very few studies that actually do randomized, controlled trials of acute alcohol effects in people,” Monning said.
“For me, it’s really connecting the behavioral and the biological, because a lot of research just looks at one side or the other,” Monnig said.
Erica Grodin, an assistant professor of psychology at Arizona State University who was not associated with the study, wrote in an email to The Herald that the publication “fills a significant gap in the field” through the use of a “rigorous experimental design.”
Grodin wrote that what she found most exciting about the project was the “inclusion of understudied biomarkers across multiple biological domains,” which provided more information on the “disease pathways impacted by heavy alcohol use” and the impact of different acute alcohol levels on these markers.
According to Monnig, the purpose of the study is to provide people with information on alcohol use to make informed decisions on their own. Monnig noted that even if certain findings associated with heavy drinking “don’t look so great … that doesn’t mean that the research is anti-alcohol.”
Angel Lopez is a senior staff writer covering Science and Research. He’s a sophomore from Tyler, Texas and planning to study neuroscience and literary arts. In his free time, you can find him playing ping pong, listening to music, or reading.
