Craving – defined as a powerful urge to drink, or intense thoughts about alcohol – is an important contributor to the development and maintenance of alcoholism. Recent research suggests that appetite-regulating hormones and peptides may be involved in the neurobiology of alcohol craving. A new study has confirmed that appetite-regulating peptides leptin and ghrelin do indeed influence alcohol craving, but especially among certain subtypes of alcoholics.

Plasma astrophysicists at the University of Warwick have found that key information about the Sun’s 'storm season’ is being broadcast across the solar system in a fractal snapshot imprinted in the solar wind. This research opens up new ways of looking at both space weather and the unstable behaviour that affects the operation of fusion powered power plants.

Researchers at Boston Medical Center (BMC) and Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) have found that persons infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), who also have alcohol problems, were negatively affected by co-infection with the hepatitis C virus (HCV). These findings appear in the June issue of Alcoholism: Clinical Experimental Research.

A new analysis has found that many alcohol treatment studies are designed in ways that inadvertently omit women and African-Americans from participation. The Stanford University School of Medicine researcher who led the effort said the findings should remind all scientists that strict study eligibility criteria can have unintended, negative consequences.

In reviewing data from a pool of 100,000 alcohol treatment patients, Keith Humphreys, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, determined that women and African-Americans were substantially more likely to be excluded from treatment studies than men or non-African-American patients, because of eligibility requirements involving psychiatric problems, employment and housing problems, and drug use.

While heavy drinking has consistently been linked to an increased risk of intimate partner violence (IPV), a new study has found that both drinking patterns and neighborhood characteristics can contribute in different ways to mutual IPV among married/cohabiting adults in the general population.

Results are published in the June issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

The link between heavy drinking and increased risk of IPV is fairly well established, according to Carol B. Cunradi, senior research scientist at Prevention Research Center and sole author of the study. However, she noted, IPV researchers are increasingly examining the role of other factors that may exacerbate this link.

Smokers who have a say in how they quit are more likely to try kicking the habit and are more successful, according to new research at the University of Rochester.

Rochester researcher Dr. Geoffrey Williams associate professor of medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, will unveil new findings at a Toronto conference this month that demonstrate patient involvement in a quit plan leads to smokers who are more motivated to quit because they genuinely want to, not because they are being nagged or bullied.