Alcohol-Related Disorders

MONDAY, Aug. 12, 2024 -- Cannabis-related disorder is associated with an increased rate of head and neck cancer (HNC), according to a study published online Aug. 8 in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery . Tyler J. Gallagher, from the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and colleagues examined the clinical association between cannabis use and HNC in a large multicenter cohort study using clinical records from a database with 20 years of data from 64 health care organizations. Data were extracted for U.S adults with and without cannabis-related disorder and without a history of HNC. Relative risks were calculated to assess the risk for HNC after propensity score matching was performed for demographic characteristics, alcohol-related disorders, and tobacco use. The cannabis-related disorder cohort included 116,076 individuals, and the non-cannabis-related disorder cohort included 3,985,286 individuals. The researchers found the cannabis-related disorder cohort had a higher rate of new HNC diagnosis in all sites. After matching (115,865 patients per group), patients with versus without cannabis-related disorder had a higher risk for any HNC (relative risk, 3.49). In a site-specific analysis, a higher risk for oral, oropharyngeal, and laryngeal cancer was seen for those with cannabis-related disorder (relative risks, 2.51, 4.90, and 8.39, respectively). When stratifying by older and younger age groups, results were consistent. "The possibility of an association between cannabis use and HNC has substantial public health implications given that cannabis use is rising among young adults with trends toward legalization," the authors write.

Men who have been on parental leave have a significantly reduced risk of being hospitalized due to alcohol consumption, according to a new study from Sweden. Men who have been on parental leave have a significantly reduced risk of being hospitalized due to alcohol consumption. This is shown by a study published in Addiction from researchers at the Department of Public Health Sciences, Stockholm University. The aim of the study was to assess whether fathers' parental leave influences alcohol-related morbidity and mortality. In order to try to find out if that is the case, the researchers have investigated the effects of parental leave policy that was implemented in Sweden in 1995. The policy encouraged fathers to use parental leave by reserving 30 days of leave for their use alone and resulted in the proportion of fathers using parental leave increasing from 43 percent to 75 percent. "Our findings were pretty remarkable considering the severity of the studied outcome. Although alcohol-related hospitalizations were rather uncommon, we found that after the policy was implemented there was a 34% decrease in these hospitalizations among fathers in the two years after birth, as well as smaller decreases up to 8 and 18 years after birth," says Helena Honkaniemi, researcher at the Department of Public Health Sciences, Stockholm University. "Most changes were found among hospitalizations for alcohol intoxication and alcohol-related mental and behavioral disorders. Additional analyses evaluating actual changes in parental leave use from before to after the policy suggest that these health consequences could be explained by the increase in fathers' parental leave use, rather than other underlying trends," says Helena Honkaniemi. However, no changes were found for alcohol-related mortality. Co-author Associate Professor Sol Juárez believes that the results of the study could be useful for policymakers. "Policymakers should consider that fathers' parental leave not only promotes more gender-equal participation in childcare, but can also reduce alcohol-related harms," Juárez says. The study "Alcohol-related morbidity and mortality by fathers' parental leave: A quasi-experimental study in Sweden" draws on Swedish register data of all fathers of singleton children born from January 1992 to December 1997, three years before and after the policy was implemented.

Children of a parent with alcohol or drug use disorder have a greater risk of intellectual disability, even if the problem only lies with the father, researchers report. According to the study, preventive measures should be directed at both parents. Children of a parent with alcohol or drug use disorder have a greater risk of intellectual disability, even if the problem only lies with the father, researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden report. According to the study, which is published in the journal eClinicalMedicine, preventive measures should be directed at both parents. It is well known that a woman's alcohol consumption during pregnancy can increase the risk of her child developing an intellectual disability. Research from Karolinska Institutet now shows that all forms of substance abuse, both in the mother and the father, and not only during pregnancy, can constitute a risk factor. Have mainly focused on mothers "Preventative measures, such as educating healthcare professionals and public health recommendations, have focused for decades on mothers with alcohol-related problems," says Lotfi Khemiri, researcher at the Departments of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet. "Our findings highlight the importance of also directing such measures towards fathers with different types of substance use disorder." The study, which is based on data from Swedish registries, comprised almost two million babies born between 1978 and 2002 and their parents. The researchers found that 1.2 per cent of babies born to parents without such a disorder were diagnosed with an intellectual disability, compared with 3 per cent of the babies who had one parent with a diagnosis related to a substance use disorder (alcohol or drug abuse). Higher risk before birth The elevated risk was greater if the parent had received a diagnosis before or during pregnancy rather than after birth. A substance use disorder diagnosis registered before birth was associated with more than twice the risk of intellectual disability in the baby, regardless of which parent had the diagnosis. The correlation was weaker but still statistically significant after adjustment of socioeconomic factors and psychiatric comorbidity in the parents. "Since it was an observational study, we can draw no conclusions about the underlying mechanism, but we suspect that both genetic and environmental factors, including harmful effects of substance abuse on fetal development, may play a part," says Dr Khemiri. "We hope that the results will contribute to the preventative efforts, as well as to the improved diagnosis of children with an intellectual disability and to timely intervention directed both to the child as well as parents in need of substance use disorder treatment." Alcohol is a major risk factor Intellectual disability was observed to be much more likely in alcohol-related problems during pregnancy, where the risk was five and three times higher depending on whether it was the mother or father who had the alcohol use disorder diagnosis. The study was financed by several bodies, primarily Region Stockholm, Systembolaget (the Swedish government alcohol retail monopoly) and the Fredrik and Ingrid Thuring Foundation. Co-author and KI researcher Henrik Larsson has received research grants from Shire/Takeda and fees from Medice, Shire/Takeda and Evolan Pharma AB, although unconnected to this present study.