Widespread Use Of Alcohol Research Articles

The prevalence of alcohol and pre-workout caffeine consumption and their effect on injuries and sleep disorders in young elite soccer players

Aim: to study the prevalence of alcohol and pre-workout caffeine use and their impact on sleep quality and injury among the young soccer players.Methods: this study examined the prevalence of alcoholic beverages and pre-workout caffeine consumption in young soccer players, as well as the effect of these substances on sleep disorders and injuries among 236 elite athletes aged 11–21 years.Results: 16.5 % of soccer players use pre-workout caffeine. Most often 1–2 times per week. Caffeine consumption is weakly positively correlated with age (p < 0,001, R = 0,41.) and is most common in the age group of 19–21 years with consumption rates at 58.8 %. 17.3 % of young soccer players consume alcohol moderately and its consumption significantly correlates with age. Most often alcohol was consumed at the age of 19–21 years. Alcohol and caffeine consumption are significantly, but weakly correlated with the risk of severe sleep disorders on the Athlete Sleep Behavior Questionnaire (ASBQ). However, injuries during matches and training sessions did not depend on alcohol (p = 0.076) or caffeine (p = 0.14) consumption according to the Kraskal — Wallis test. At the same time, sleep disorders on the ASBQ significantly correlated with injury.Conclusion: the widespread use of alcohol and caffeine, and their negative impact on sleep among soccer players aged 11–21 years were revealed, but there was no connection between the use of these substances and injuries.

Effect of alcohol exposure on the efficacy and safety of tenofovir alafenamide fumarate, a major medicine against human immunodeficiency virus

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) continues to be a major health concern. AIDS-related deaths (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) have decreased recently, but chronic liver disease is now a major cause of mortality among HIV patients. Widespread alcohol use is recognized to be a major contributing factor. Tenofovir alafenamide fumarate (TAF), one of the most used HIV drugs, requires hydrolysis followed by phosphorylation to produce tenofovir diphosphate, the ultimate anti-HIV metabolite. Carboxylesterase-1 (CES1), established to hydrolyze TAF, is known to catalyze transesterification in the presence of ethanol. The aim of the study was to test the hypothesis that metabolism-based interactions between TAF and ethanol negatively impact both efficacy and safety of TAF. To test this hypothesis, the metabolism of TAF was determined in human primary hepatocytes and with a large number of human liver samples (S9 fractions) in the presence or absence of ethanol. The metabolism was monitored by LC-MS/MS (liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry) and the level of CES1 or CES2 was determined by Western blotting. Consistent with the hypothesis, TAF underwent transesterification in the presence of ethanol accompanied by decreased hydrolysis. The formation of tenofovir diphosphate (the therapeutically active metabolite) was significantly decreased. In addition, TAF but not its hydrolytic metabolite, was found to increase intracellular lipid retention, and the increase was enhanced by ethanol. These findings conclude that alcohol consumption, beyond commonly accepted poor adherence to HIV medications, directly impacts the efficacy and safety of TAF.

The prevalence of illegal and alcoholic substances among motor vehicle crash survivors: results from a Level-I Trauma Center in Saudi Arabia

Background: Drug abuse is a public health problem in any country and road safety in particular as it poses serious consequences while driving, affecting the safety of all road users. This study aimed to investigate the drug prevalence and alcohol abuse among motor vehicle crash (MVC) survivors. Methods: This descriptive study was based on a review of the retrospective chart involving patients that were admitted to the Emergency Department (ED) of a level-I trauma center in Riyadh following an MVC. Injured patients in 2018 were identified from the electronic medical record system, and substance investigation was documented. After the hospital discharge, the research team contacted patients via phone to obtain further details about the nature of the crash and illegal substance use. Results: During the study, 209 patients were admitted to the ED following MVCs. The population was primarily males (84.7%) with an average age of 30 years. Forty subjects (19.14%) were screened for illegal substances by blood, urine, or both, 35 of which had confirmed intoxication. Alcohol was used in almost two-thirds of the 35 lab-confirmed intoxicated subjects (n = 23, 65.71%) either alone or in combination with other types of drugs. Conclusion: The widespread use of alcohol and other drug abuse among those involved in MVC is alarming and endangers road safety. There is a need to implement well-defined guidelines to screen, detect, and impose a penalty on driving under the influence to reduce MVC and improve population health.

Alcohol Use among Medical Students: Linking Knowledge as a Social Capital Defining Norms in Learning Institutions

College alcohol use continues to be a national public health issue. World Health Organization approximates that 53% of people at the age of 15 years and above, have at one time used alcohol. Alcohol is recognized and acts as ‘entrance’ to the use of other substances. The study was carried out in Kenya Medical Training College, Embu Campus. The study presents an argument that knowledge about alcohol is a social capital defining use and non-use of alcohol among medical students at Kenya Medical Training College. A Cross-sectional analytical approach was adopted for the study design. A sample of 270 students was included in the study. Data was analyzed using both descriptive (Frequencies and percentages) and inferential statistics (chi square tests and regression analysis). For objective one, the study finds a 75% prevalence rate of alcohol use among students of Embu MTC. Demographic factors influencing alcohol use include, religion (p=0.002205), program undertaken (p<0.0001) and with whom the respondent is living with (p<0.0001). The study recommends development and implementation of policies and programs aimed at addressing the widespread use of alcohol in the study site.

BIOGAS PRODUCTION IN THE CONCENTRATED DISTILLERY WASTEWATER TREATMENT

The paper deals with the waste disposal problem of the alcohol industry caused by the widespread use of alcohol as biofuels. In the technology for the production of alcohol from cereal crops, a distillery spent wash (DSW) is formed (per 1 dm3 of alcohol – 10–20 dm3 DSW), which refers to highly concentrated wastewater, the COD value reaches 40 g O2/dm3. Since the existing physical and chemical methods of its processing are not cost-effective, the researchers develop the processing technologies for its utilization, for example, an anaerobic digestion. Apart from the purification of highly concentrated wastewater, the advantage of this method is the production of biogas and highquality fertilizer. The problems of biotechnology for biogas production from the distillery spent wash are its high acidity–pH 3.7–5.0 (the optimum pH value for the methanogenesis process is 6.8–7.4) and low nitrogen content, the lack of which inhibits the development of the association of microorganisms. In order to solve these problems, additional raw materials of various origins (chemical compounds, spent anaerobic sludge, waste from livestock farms, etc.) are used. The purpose of this work is to determine the appropriate ratio of the fermentable mixture components: cosubstrate, distillery spent wash and wastewater of the plant for co-fermentation to produce an energy carrier (biogas) and effective wastewater treatment of the distillery. In order to ensure the optimal pH for methanogenesis, poultry manure has been used as a co-substrate. The co-fermentation process of DSW with manure has been carried out at dry matter ratios of 1:1, 1:3, 1:5, 1:7 respectively. It is found that when the concentration of manure in the mixture is insufficient (DSW/manure – 1:1, 1:3), the pH value decreases during fermentation which negatively affects methane formation; when the concentration of manure in the mixture is increased (DSW/manure – 1:5, 1:7), the process is characterized by a high yield of biogas and methane content. The maximum output of biogas with a methane concentration of 70 ± 2% is observed at the ratio of components on a dry matter “wastewater: DSW: manure” – 0,2:1:7 respectively. The COD reduction reaches a 70% when using co-fermentation with the combination of components “wastewater: DSW: manure” (0,3:1:5) respectively.

"Red Wine, Please": Rebellious Drinking in Kate O'Brien's Fiction

"Red Wine, Please":Rebellious Drinking in Kate O'Brien's Fiction Jane Davison The novelist Kate O'Brien (1897–1974) had a fondness for alcohol that would, over time, impinge significantly on her frame of mind, health, and finances. As an enthusiastic partygoer and a generous hostess, she spent much of the income from the sales of her books on lavish entertaining and drinking in pubs and hotel bars. The reasons why she drank heavily are debatable, but given that, as her biographer Eibhear Walshe writes, "her sense of self was an unhappy and tormented one and her private life was, at times, lonely, turbulent and chaotic," it seems entirely likely that she used drink as a coping strategy to deal with the problems in her life.1 Alcohol plays an important role in the lives of O'Brien's fictional cohorts and, in two of her novels set in Ireland, Without My Cloak (1931) and The Last of Summer (1943), the central characters choose to drink to provide the courage to confront their inner turmoil and to rebel against their middle-class families. O'Brien's relationship with alcohol reflects her own class consciousness. Born in Limerick in 1897, O'Brien was the daughter of a wealthy Catholic merchant and grew up accustomed to middle-class civility and comfort. In her fiction, she writes from within her own class as an aficionado of its customs and manners. In a 1967 letter to her sister, Anne O'Mara, O'Brien explains that her quest as an author was to provide the reading public with a more balanced view of Ireland: "Its, you'll agree, the passion of all my novels—to present the good, well-bred, real Irish Catholic society."2 O'Brien strove to dispel the myth that the Irish were a nation of feckless, alcoholic peasants and instead, sought to depict a society familiar to her in which "she expected people to be what she called agreeably civilised."3 Accoutrements of bourgeois respectability pervade her work. Alcohol was one of the elements that helped to convey the affluence [End Page 40] and sophistication of her own class: in Without My Cloak (1931), she writes of the character Dr Joe: "he was fond of a good race meeting, a good medical joke, a good glass of brandy and a good run with hounds on a Saturday morning."4 O'Brien's repetitive use of "good" at the start of each clause emphasizes Dr Joe's status as an upright member of Irish society. The activities he partakes necessarily having superior and virtuous qualities. O'Brien assuredly disassociated herself with the "drunken Paddy" stereotype that was portrayed in popular perceptions and cultural representations of the Irish, and widely attributed to late nineteenth-century Irish emigrants to British and American industrial cities. Despite the widespread use of alcohol throughout all social classes in Victorian England, excessive drinking became stigmatized as a distinctly Irish phenomenon. As Perry Curtis notes in his classic study Apes and Angels (1971), the evolutionary thought of the time "tended to polarize Englishmen and Irishmen by providing a scientific basis by assuming that such characteristics as violence, poverty, improvidence, political volatility, and drunkenness were inherently Irish and only Irish."5 The way in which the Irish were reported in the press, and depicted in Punch cartoons, did much to reinforce popular beliefs that these attributes were somehow uniquely Irish and contributed to them being typecast as figures of fun. By the end of the nineteenth century the Stage Irishman—unreliable, hard drinking, and belligerent—was a nearly ubiquitous character in the theaters of London and New York. Although drink and the Irish had become synonymous with each other, statistics suggest that the consumption of beer and spirits in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century was not especially high, by international standards.6 Yet, given that drinking was a popular recreational activity among the Irish and one in which all classes partook, the figures are contradictory. It is true that large sections of the population lacked the means to become reckless binge drinkers—but the statistics fail to take into account that an...

A critique of cannabis legalization proposals in Canada

An editorial in this issue describes a cannabis policy framework document issued by a major Canadian research centre, calling for legalization of non-medical use under strict controls to prevent increase in use, especially by adolescents and young adults who are most vulnerable to adverse effects of cannabis. It claims that such a system would eliminate the severe personal, social and monetary costs of prohibition, diminish the illicit market, and provide more humane management of cannabis use disorders. It claims that experience with regulation of alcohol and tobacco will enable a system based on public health principles to control access of youth to cannabis without the harm caused by prohibition.The present critique argues that the claims made against decriminalization and for legalization are unsupported, or even contradicted, by solid evidence. Early experience in other jurisdictions suggests that legalization increases use by adolescents and its attendant harms. Regulation of alcohol use does not provide a good model for cannabis controls because there is widespread alcohol use and harm among adolescents and young adults. Government monopolies of alcohol sale have been used primarily as sources of revenue rather than for guarding public health, and no reason has been offered to believe they would act differently with respect to cannabis.Good policy decisions require extensive unbiased information about the individual and social benefits and costs of both drug use and proposed control measures, and value judgments about the benefit/harm balance of each option. Important parts of the necessary knowledge about cannabis are not yet available, so that the value judgments are not yet possible. Therefore, a better case can be made for eliminating some of the harms of prohibition by decriminalization of cannabis possession and deferring decision about legalization until the necessary knowledge has been acquired.

Outsourcing the Risks: Alcohol Licensing, Risk and the Making of the Night Time Economy

Mariana Valverde argues that in the late twentieth century, the British state contracted out the prevention of disorder and monitoring of risks produced by widespread alcohol use to the private sector through the process of liquor licensing. This paper will argue that this scenario was duplicated in Victoria at the same time. It will do so by an analysis of four government-instigated inquiries into liquor licensing regimes from 1965 to 1998. The inquiries were distinguished by the subtly different emphases in their terms of reference. In 1965, the Phillips Royal Commission was directed to inquire into the best ways of dealing with the problems alcohol produced and how best to regulate it for the benefit of the population as a whole. By the time the Nieuwenhuysen Report was commissioned in 1985, the emphasis had changed, and he was directed to inquire how best to serve the interests of alcohol consumers and to produce the licensing regulatory regime which would enable the construction of a 24-hour city. Any anomalies that still existed in the revised Act were eliminated in the 1998 review which was instigated as a direct response to the National Competition Policy. A consequence of these changes over 30 years was the development of particular risk groups, such as ‘binge-drinking young people’, whose violence and nuisance must be controlled to enable all other ‘reasonable’ and ‘moderate’ drinkers be allowed to keep drinking. Thus the notion of risk had been redefined and the responsibility for dealing with these risks had been directed from the state to individual licensees and individual drinkers.

The Evolution of Alcohol Use in India

This paper traces the role of alcohol production and use in the daily lives of people in India, from ancient times to the present day. Alcohol use has been an issue of great ambivalence throughout the rich and long history of the Indian subcontinent. The behaviors and attitudes about alcohol use in India are very complex, contradictory and convoluted because of the many different influences in that history. The evolution of alcohol use patterns in India can be divided into four broad historical periods (time of written records), beginning with the Vedic era (ca. 1500-700 BCE). From 700 BCE to 1100 CE, ("Reinterpretation and Synthesis") is the time of emergence of Buddhism and Jainism, with some new anti-alcohol doctrines, as well as post-Vedic developments in the Hindu traditions and scholarly writing. The writings of the renowned medical practitioners, Charaka and Susruta, added new lines of thought, including arguments for "moderate alcohol use." The Period of Islamic Influence (1100-1800 CE), including the Mughal era from the 1520s to 1800, exhibited a complex interplay of widespread alcohol use, competing with the clear Quranic opposition to alcohol consumption. The fourth period (1800 to the present) includes the deep influence of British colonial rule and the recent half century of Indian independence, beginning in 1947. The contradictions and ambiguities-with widespread alcohol use in some sectors of society, including the high status caste of warriors/rulers (Kshatriyas), versus prohibitions and condemnation of alcohol use, especially for the Brahmin (scholar-priest) caste, have produced alcohol use patterns that include frequent high-risk, heavy and hazardous drinking. The recent increases in alcohol consumption in many sectors of the general Indian population, coupled with the strong evidence of the role of alcohol in the spread of HIV/STI infections and other health risks, point to the need for detailed understanding of the complex cross-currents emerging from the past history of alcohol use and abuse in India.

Understanding the uneven distribution of the incidence of homicide in Latin America

Throughout the final years of the twentieth century and into the beginning of the twenty-first, violence has been one of the main public health issues in Latin America, a region which has some of the highest mortality rates due to violence in the world. However, there seems to be an uneven geographical distribution of such instances. We reviewed epidemiological data on violence globally and in Latin America, and here, we discuss differences between the Latin American countries in the context of a sociological framework as well as from a public health perspective. Our results indicate marked differences by country in terms of rates of violence. Countries such as Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay, have low violence mortality rates; Peru, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Panama, and Paraguay have moderate rates, and Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras and Venezuela have high to extremely high mortality rates. Factors related to violence include social inequalities, lack of employment opportunities, urban segregation, a culture of masculinity, local drug markets, and the availability of firearms and widespread use of alcohol. The observed homicide variability between Latin American countries can be explained largely by differences in the countries' social contexts and political models. In those countries where homicide rates are extremely high, governments should review their current policies and take preventive actions. Fortunately increasingly nowadays there are promising advancements in that direction.

Drink a little; take a few drugs: do nurses have knowledge to identify and manage in‐patients at risk of drugs and alcohol?

The widespread use of alcohol and other drugs poses particular problems during hospitalisation. Although nurses have been identified as an appropriate group to screen patients and provide acute and ongoing management to people with drug and alcohol-related problems, rates of screening are low. The aims of this study were to identify current practices for screening by nurses working in medical and surgical wards, determine their knowledge relating to problems associated with substance use and identify their self-reported skills in managing patients with drug- and alcohol-related problems. A chart audit of medical records was completed and a survey was distributed to nurses working in the study wards. Screening for alcohol and drug use was documented on only 22/79 medical records, and detailed information about quantity and duration of use was recorded in only nine. Overall, the nurses reported that they had little knowledge about substance use problems, and felt that they lacked skills to care adequately for these patients. The results of this study suggest a need for a comprehensive training and education to ensure that nurses are familiar with policies and protocols for management of patients and to assist nurses to provide evidence-based care and make appropriate referrals to specialist services.

Fatal poisoning in drug addicts in the Nordic countries

The study includes medicolegally examined fatal poisonings among drug addicts in 1997 in the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and the results are compared to a similar investigation from 1991. A common definition of “drug addict” was applied by the participating countries. The highest death rate by poisoning in drug addicts was observed in Denmark, where it was 6.54 per 10 5 inhabitants, followed by Norway with 6.35, Sweden with 2.21, Finland with 1.63 and Iceland with 1.20 per 10 5 inhabitants. All countries showed a higher death rate in 1997 than in 1991. For all countries the distribution of deaths according to geographical regions showed a decreasing number of drug deaths in the metropolitan area and an increasing number in other cities. Heroin/morphine dominated as the cause of death and was responsible for about 90% of the cases in Norway. In Sweden and Denmark, however, heroin/morphine caused only about 70% of the fatal poisonings. About 30% of the fatal poisonings in Denmark and Sweden were caused by other group I drugs, in Denmark mainly methadone and in Sweden mainly propoxyphene. Apart from two cases in Sweden methadone deaths were not seen in the other Nordic countries. In Finland heroin/morphine deaths have increased from about 10% in 1991 to about 40% in 1997. Forty-four percent of the fatal poisonings in Finland were caused by other group I drugs, mainly codeine and propoxyphene. The two fatal poisonings in Iceland were caused by carbon monoxide. Only few deaths in this investigation were caused by amphetamine and cocaine. A widespread use of alcohol, cannabis and benzodiazepines, especially diazepam, was seen in all the countries.

The Alcohol Culture on Åland – Tourism and Tax-Free Liquor

The drinking habits on Åland, a region of Finland with far-reaching autonomy, are widely influenced by the lively tourism on the island and by the large amount of tax-free alcohol that every year is bought and consumed by the inhabitants. The annual alcohol consumption in 1995 was estimated between 7 and 8 litres absolute alcohol per capita, which is considerably higher than the consumption level according to the official sales statistics on Åland. It is also higher than the consumption level in the whole country, which according to the sales statistics in 1994 was 6.6 litres per capita. Even the share of abstainers, especially among women, is substantially lower than in the rest of the country. The overall drinking frequency is essentially the same as in the rest of Finland. A distinguishing factor is still the high drinking frequency among women in the age 50–69. The dominant beverage is beer. Fifty-five percent of the alcohol consumed in 1995 (measured in absolute alcohol) consisted of beer, which is an increase by 10 percent since 1980. Consumption of wine has also become more popular, while a significant decline in the consumption of spirits can be noted. It was also shown that a substantial amount of the alcohol consumed by the Ålanders was purchased on the ferries that ply the waters between Sweden and Finland. The low share of abstainers and the relatively high consumption among women are features that characterize the drinking habits on Åland. The wide spread use of alcohol also points to a more open and liberal attitude towards alcohol than in the rest of the country.

Drug addict deaths in the Nordic countries: a study based on medicolegally examined cases in the five Nordic countries in 1991

The study includes medicolegally examined deaths among drug addicts in 1991 in the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. A common definition of ‘drug addict’ was applied by the participating countries. The greatest number of drug addict deaths per 10 5 inhabitants was observed in Denmark followed, in descending order by Norway, Sweden, Finland and finally Iceland with only four deaths. The main difference between the countries was found in the number of fatal poisonings. The distribution according to geographical regions showed that about half of all drug addict deaths occurred in the metropolitan areas. Of the capitals, the greatest number of fatal poisonings per 10 5 inhabitants was seen in Oslo, followed by Copenhagen with a similar number, Stockholm with only the half, and Helsinki with a quarter. Heroin/morphine dominated as cause of death in fatal poisonings in Norway and Sweden. In Denmark, heroin/morphine caused about half of the fatal poisonings only, and nearly one third of the fatal poisonings was caused by methadone. Except for two cases in Sweden, methadone deaths were not seen in the other Nordic countries. Amphetamine caused one tenth of the fatal poisonings in Sweden. In Finland only one tenth of the deaths were caused by heroin/morphine and more by codeine, ethylmorphine and different drugs and poisons not classified in Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs 1961 or the International Convention on Psychotropic Substances 1971. A widespread use of alcohol, cannabis and benzodiazepines, diazepam especially, was seen in all the countries.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL SKILLS AND ADOLESCENT DRINKING

Studies of the drinking patterns of Australian youth have revealed the widespread use of alcohol, with substantial numbers of high school students drinking on a daily basis and regularly becoming intoxicated. The present research investigated the relationship between social skills and drinking behaviour in teenagers. The Adolescent Alcohol Involvement Scale was administered to 82 males and females aged between 13 and 16 to distinguish among drinkers, problem drinkers and non-drinkers. To measure social skills, the Adolescent Problem Inventory was administered to boys and the Problem Inventory for Adolescent Girls to girls. There were significant group differences on the social skills measures with non-drinkers receiving the highest scores, indicating the most social skills, followed by drinkers and problem drinkers. An analysis of results showed that 11% of drinkers and 50% of problem drinkers were in the incompetent range of social skills performance while no non-drinkers scored in this range. None of the problem drinkers scored in the highly competent range of performance whereas 22% of drinkers and 40% of non-drinkers did. Results are discussed in terms of linking a number of problem behaviours in adolescence, such as drinking, smoking and delinquent behaviour, to deficits in social skills.