Abstract
Alcohol use disorders are pervasive in society and their impact affects quality of life, morbidity and mortality, as well as individual productivity. Alcohol has detrimental effects on an individual’s physiology and nervous system, and is associated with disorders of many organ and endocrine systems impacting an individual’s health, behavior, and ability to interact with others. Youth are particularly affected. Unfortunately, adolescent usage also increases the probability for a progression to dependence. Several areas of research indicate that the deleterious effects of alcohol abuse may be exacerbated by mixing caffeine with alcohol. Some behavioral evidence suggests that caffeine increases alcohol drinking and binge drinking episodes, which in turn can foster the development of alcohol dependence. As a relatively new public health concern, the epidemiological focus has been to establish a need for investigating the effects of caffeinated alcohol. While the trend of co-consuming these substances is growing, knowledge of the central mechanisms associated with caffeinated ethanol has been lacking. Research suggests that caffeine and ethanol can have additive or synergistic pharmacological actions and neuroadaptations, with the adenosine and dopamine systems in particular implicated. However, the limited literature on the central effects of caffeinated ethanol provides an impetus to increase our knowledge of the neuroadaptive effects of this combination and their impact on cognition and behavior. Research from our laboratories indicates that an established rodent animal model of alcoholism can be extended to investigate the acute and chronic effects of caffeinated ethanol.
Highlights
Alcohol use disorders are pervasive in society and their impact affects quality of life, morbidity and mortality, as well as individual productivity
Alcohol drinking in underage drinkers aged 12–20 years accounts for 11% of alcohol consumption in the United States, with a majority of this intake occurring during binge drinking episodes [18]
Existing evidence suggests that the increased availability of caffeinated alcoholic beverages exacerbates both of these predispositions for developing alcohol dependence
Summary
Further complicating this issue is the common occurrence of consuming others drugs with alcohol. Taken in conjunction with findings that high alcohol-preferring rat lines exhibit differential consumption of and neurobehavioral responses to other drugs of abuse beyond alcohol, such as cocaine and nicotine, compared to nonpreferring and nonselected counterparts, it is likely that these animals could provide a useful model to examine caffeine intake. P rats consumed more caffeine than did outbred Wistar rats This difference suggests that genetic selection for high alcohol preference may have generated a propensity for elevated caffeine intake. These findings may provide additional validity for the use of the P animal model of alcoholism to examine ethanol co-abuse with other substances. This study provides basic research support for clinical findings indicating an association between alcohol and caffeine intake, which may be mediated by common reward neurocircuitry
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