One-month repeatability of alcohol metabolism, sensitivity and acute tolerance (original) (raw)

1987, Journal of studies on alcohol

Subjects {N = 34) in the Colorado Alcohol Research on Twins and Adoptees (CARTA) were brought back between 30 and 60 days after their initial testing to be fetested on all the CARTA procedures. As before, subjects were given a dose of alcohol (.8 g/kg of body weight) calculated to bring their blood alcohol level (BAL) to near 100 mg/dl. Additional doses were given al the end of each of the next 2 hours to maintain their BAL near peak for approximately 3 hours, Repeatability (test-retest correlation) for alcohol clearance rate was near 0, with repeatabilities between .40 and .55 for peak BAL, time-to-peak BAL, average session BAL and relative volume of alcohol distributton, Repeatabilities of prealcohol baseline scores were generally high (median, .71) for the CARTA battery of physiological, motor coordination, perceptual speed and reaction time measures, bul were only low to moderate for sensitivity scores (median, ..27) and acute tolerance scores fmedian, .25} calculated on these measures. There was •ome evidence that repeatabilities for alcohol metabolism, sensitivity and acute tolerance were lower for women than for men. (J. Stud. Alcohol 48: 437-442, 1987) ERY FEW STUDIES have attempted to assess the degree to which alcohol metabolism and the effects of alcohol on behavior are consistent from day to day in humans. These day-today variations in alcohol metabolism, sensitivity and tolerance are the result of transient environmental factors (e.g., diet, fatigue level, mood state) and set limits on the degree to which the effects of alcohol can be accounted for by genetic factors or by common family environment. There is already some accumulated evidence to indicate that alcohol metabolism is considerably variable from day to day. Wagner and Patel (1972), using different alcohol doses on 5 different days over a 4-month period for a single subject, and Wagner (1973), reanalyzing data on six men given a single small dose of alcohol per day over 21 days in a study by Vesell et al. (1971), concluded that there was significant day-today variation in the rate of alcohol absorption and clearance, but some stability for the relative volume of alcohol distribution. Kopun and Propping (1977) fetested six men to assess the