Elderly alcoholics who abstain from drinking at least for six months exhibit normal brain functioning. Previous studies have shown the deleterious effects of active alcoholism on cognitive function. There is also a growing body of literature on the extent of cognitive recovery that can occur with abstinence. To study the effects of long-term abstinence on cognitive functioning in elderly alcoholics, researchers from the Neurobehavioral Research, Inc., Corte Madera, California, and Honolulu, Hawaii studied 91 abstinent elderly alcoholics (49 men and 42 women), who were an average of 67 years old (age group: 58–85 years), and a comparison group of non-drinkers and light drinkers of the same age. The length of abstinence among the alcoholics was an average of 15 years (6 months to 45 years). The alcoholics were divided into three sub-groups: individuals who attained abstinence before the age of 50 years, between the ages of 50 and 60 years and after the age of 60 years. It was found that all three groups performed as well or better than the non-alcoholic group on tests of memory, attention, thinking and verbal skills. Only the abstinent group before 50 years of age performed worse than the non-alcoholic group, and this was only in the domain of auditory working memory. It was also found that abstinent alcoholics tended to have larger craniums than the comparison group of non-alcoholics, and those with larger craniums, a marker of a larger brain reserve capacity, generally performed better on tests of cognitive function. This effect was strongest for those who drank the longest and had the shortest abstinence. However, the results do not indicate that years of heavy drinking do no harm to the brain. Instead, these suggest that alcoholics who survive to old age with relatively good health may be a tougher lot whose brains are intrinsically more resistant to the damaging effects of alcoholism. It is possible for some elderly abstinent alcoholics to either have escaped the neurodegenerative effects of alcohol abuse on cognitive function, or to have fully recovered any cognitive function that was lost during active alcoholism. Also, the findings do not imply that all older drinkers who quit will have normal cognitive abilities. Instead, cognitively healthier alcoholics, with more brain reserve capacity, may be more likely to live into their 60s, 70s, or 80s with relatively intact cognition.
Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research,
November 2007