Premium
EVIDENCE OF GENETIC FACTORS IN THE APPETITE FOR ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
Author(s) -
Mardones Jorge
Publication year - 1972
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1972.tb28135.x
Subject(s) - citation , appetite , library science , psychology , medicine , computer science
Varela’ postulated that the appetite for alcohol observed in human beings could be classified as physiological, pharmacological, or pathological. It seems that physiological appetite is related to the caloric value of ethanol. People experiencing this kind of appetite do not look for the effect of alcohol on the central nervous system (CNS), with the result that they drink in amounts and conditions that do not allow an increase of blood alcohol to levels affecting behavior. Alcohol consumption on the part of experimental animals, specially rats and mice, has been considered to be caused by physiological a p ~ e t i t e . ~ . ~ Individuals with pharmacological appetite for alcohol clearly want to experience the effects of this drug on the CNS, inducing a change of mood and even a loss of consciousness. Some of these individuals look only for alcoholinduced euphoria, but others want to be alienated through inebriety. Animal models of this kind of appetite are the Masserman cats as well as monkeys allowed to self-inject ethanol solutions. Pathological appetite is defined by Varela as that induced by physical dependence on alcohol, which is expressed by the symptoms characterizing the forms denominated gamma and delta alcoholism by Je l l i ne~k .~ The presence of genetic factors playing an important role in the physiological appetite for alcohol observed in rats and mice can be considered as a very wellestablished fact. The data are from ‘‘drinker” and “nondrinker” strains of rats obtained by artificial selection in the University of Chile (UChA and UChB)5 and in the ALKO laboratories in Helsinki (AA and ANA)6 as well as by the different voluntary intake of alcohol observed in several inbreed strains of mice7. The idea of genetic factors in alcoholism is a very old one; but data concerning it have been accumulating only in recent years. The evidence coming from studies of twins or half-siblings is discussed by other authors in this symposium. I will therefore limit myself to the discussion of the eventual finding of an X-linked factor in alcoholism. The idea of the presence of such a factor arose from the discovery by CruzCokes of a highly significant association between alcoholic liver cirrhosis and color blindness. The association of color blindness with alcoholism independent of liver damage was observed afterwards by Cruz-Coke and Varelaeg In both studies, color vision was tested by the Hardy-Rand-Ritter plates (HRR) and generally classified as undetermined, since the most frequent failure was in the plate 3 of this test. Using a more accurate method, the Farnsworth Munsell 100-hue test (FM 100) Varela and colleagueslo confirmed this association and were able to establish that the color-discrimination disturbance was located in the blue-yellow and bluegreen zone of the spectrum. The association between color blindness and liver cirrhosis was confirmed by Fialkow and co-workers,lI who considered this alteration as secondary to the liver damage, since some of the patients who failed in plate 3 of the HRR test were able to see it after recovery.