Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research
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Alcohol. Clin. Exp. Res. · Mar 2012
Randomized Controlled TrialText-message-based drinking assessments and brief interventions for young adults discharged from the emergency department.
Brief interventions have the potential to reduce heavy drinking in young adults who present to the emergency department (ED), but require time and resources rarely available. Text-messaging (TM) may provide an effective way to collect drinking data from young adults after ED discharge as well as to provide immediate feedback and ongoing support for behavior change. The feasibility of screening young adults in the ED, recruiting them for a TM-based interventional trial, collecting weekly drinking data through TM, and the variance in drinking outcomes remains unknown. ⋯ TM can be used to assess drinking in young adults and can deliver brief interventions to young adults discharged from the ED. TM-based interventions have the potential to reduce heavy drinking among young adults but larger studies are needed to establish efficacy.
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Alcohol. Clin. Exp. Res. · Mar 2012
Randomized Controlled TrialRandomized controlled trial of mailed personalized feedback for problem drinkers in the emergency department: the short-term impact.
Evidence exists for the efficacy of emergency department (ED)-based brief alcohol interventions, but attempts to incorporate face-to-face interventions into routine ED practice have been hampered by time, financial, and attitudinal constraints. Mailed personalized feedback, which is likely to be more feasible, has been associated with reduced alcohol consumption in other settings, but its cost-effectiveness in the ED has not been examined. ⋯ Mailed personalized feedback is efficacious in reducing quantity/frequency of alcohol consumption among patients with alcohol-involved ED presentations. Mailed feedback has high cost-efficacy and a low absolute cost, making it a promising candidate for integration into ED care.
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Alcohol. Clin. Exp. Res. · Mar 2012
Alcohol increases the permeability of airway epithelial tight junctions in Beas-2B and NHBE cells.
Tight junctions form a continuous belt-like structure between cells and act to regulate paracellular signaling. Protein kinase C (PKC) has been shown to regulate tight junction assembly and disassembly and is activated by alcohol. Previous research has shown that alcohol increases the permeability of tight junctions in lung alveolar cells. However, little is known about alcohol's effect on tight junctions in epithelium of the conducting airways. We hypothesized that long-term alcohol exposure reduces zonula occluden-1 (ZO-1) and claudin-1 localization at the cell membrane and increases permeability through a PKC-dependent mechanism. ⋯ These results suggest that alcohol disrupts ZO-1, claudin-1, claudin-5, and claudin-7 through the activation of PKCα, leading to an alcohol-induced "leakiness" in bronchial epithelial cells. Such alcohol-induced airway-leak state likely contributes to the impaired airway host defenses associated with acute and chronic alcohol ingestion.
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Alcohol. Clin. Exp. Res. · Mar 2012
Editorial CommentComment on the paper by Suffoletto et al. entitled: Text-message-based assessments and brief intervention for young adults discharged from the emergency department.
This commentary discusses the importance of the recent article by Suffoletto and colleagues (in press), from the perspective of the developing role that technology such as text-messaging is serving as a means of increasing the reach of brief interventions for harmful alcohol use. ⋯ Future adequately powered randomized studies are needed to show the comparative effect of new technologies, such as text-messaging, in comparison with more traditional methods of providing interventions in reducing harmful alcohol use.