Family history of alcoholism raises obesity risk


Because alcohol and bingeing on junk foods stimulate the same parts of the brain, it may be that people with a predisposition to alcoholism are replacing alcohol with junk foods, says the team from Washington University in St. Louis.

This is especially true for women, they said.

“Much of what we eat nowadays contains more calories than the food we ate in the 1970s and 1980s but it also contains the sorts of calories - particularly a combination of sugar, salt and fat - that appeal to what are commonly called the reward centers in the brain,” Richard Grucza, who worked on the study published this month in the Archives of General Psychiatry, said in a statement.

“Alcohol and drugs affect those same parts of the brain and our thinking was that because the same brain structures are being stimulated, overconsumption of those foods might be greater in people with a predisposition to addiction.”




The study is part of a body of growing evidence for a link between alcohol abuse and obesity, particularly for women.

The alcoholism-overeating link might help explain rising obesity in the United States, which has doubled from 15 percent of the population in the late 1970s to 33 percent in 2004.

Drug firms are eyeing the alcohol-obesity link in hope of reaching the potentially huge U.S. market for obesity drugs.

Earlier this month, Orexigen Therapeutics and Takeda Pharmaceutical won backing from a U.S. advisory panel for the diet drug Contrave, which combines naltrexone, used to fight alcohol and drug addiction, and the antidepressant bupropion. The drug aims to target cravings, curb appetite and boost metabolism.

If approved by the U.S. Food Administration, the drug would be the first new weight-loss pill in a decade.


By Julie Steenhuysen


Provided by ArmMed Media