Cognitive, behavioral, and emotional problems among school-age children of alcoholic parents.

Sixty-four children from 37 families with an alcoholic parent were compared with 80 children from 45 families that did not have an alcoholic parent on measures of intelligence, cognitive achievement, psychological and physical disorders, impulsivity-hyperactivity, social competence, learning problems, behavior problems, and self-esteem. On nine of 17 tests, the children of alcoholic parents scored less well than did the children of nonalcoholic parents, although both were within normal ranges. Factor analysis yielded significant differences between the two samples in emotional functioning and cognitive abilities and performance; marginally significant differences were found with respect to behavior problems.

Family rituals and the recurrence of alcoholism over generations.

There have been relatively few attempts to identify environmental factors in the transmission of alcoholism across generations. Using the framework of family systems theory, the authors examined the extent of change in family rituals in 25 families in which at least 1 parent was or had been an alcoholic. They found that families whose rituals were altered during the period of heaviest parental drinking were more likely to evidence transmission of an alcohol problem to the children's generation than families whose rituals remianed intact.

Influence of isometric exercise on blood flow and sweating in glabrous and nonglabrous human skin.

The distribution of the reflex effects of isometric exercise on cutaneous vasomotor and sudomotor function is not clear. We examined the effects of isometric exercise by different muscle masses on skin blood flow (SkBF) and sweat rate (SR) in nonglabrous skin and in glabrous skin. The latter contains arteriovenous anastomoses (AVAs), which cause large fluctuations in SkBF. SkBF was measured by laser-Doppler flowmetry (LDF) and reported as cutaneous vascular conductance (CVC; LDF/mean arterial pressure). SR was measured by capacitance hygrometry. LDF and SR were measured at the sole, palm, forearm, and ventral leg during separate bouts of isometric handgrip (IHG) and isometric leg extension (ILE). CVC and its standard deviation decreased significantly during IHG and ILE in the palm and sole (P < 0.05) but not in the forearm or leg (P > 0.05). Only palmar SR increased significantly during IHG and ILE (P < 0.05). We conclude that the major reflex influences of isometric exercise on the skin include AVAs and palmar sweat glands and that this is true for both arm and leg exercise.

WHO cross-cultural applicability research on diagnosis and assessment of substance use disorders: an overview of methods and selected results.

The cross-cultural applicability of criteria for the diagnosis of substance use disorders and of instruments used for their assessment were studied in nine cultures. The qualitative and quantitative methods used in the study are described. Equivalents for English terms and concepts were found for all instrument items, diagnostic criteria, diagnoses and concepts, although often there was no single term equivalent to the English in the languages studied. Items assuming self-consciousness about feelings, and imputing causal relations, posed difficulties in several cultures. Single equivalent terms were lacking for some diagnostic criteria, and criteria were sometimes not readily differentiated from one another. Several criteria--narrowing of the drinking repertoire, time spent obtaining and using the drug, and tolerance for the drug--were less easy to use in cultures other than the United States. Thresholds for diagnosis used by clinicians often differed. In most cultures, clinicians were more likely to make a diagnosis of drug dependence than of alcohol dependence although behavioural signs were equivalent. The attitudes of societies to alcohol and drug use affects the use of criteria and the making of diagnoses.

Alcoholic beverage consumption in India, Mexico, and Nigeria: a cross-cultural comparison.

Drinking practices vary substantially among different countries. An understanding of such differences can help researchers, clinicians, and policymakers develop prevention, diagnostic, and treatment measures as well as overall alcohol policies that are appropriate for a given country. Accordingly, researchers have conducted cross-cultural analyses of drinking patterns and practices. Three countries included in such analyses are India, Mexico, and Nigeria. These countries differ substantially in their ethnic and cultural characteristics, including the role that alcohol plays in daily life. To gain a better insight into the attitudes toward alcohol in these countries, researchers have analyzed the alcoholic beverage preferences, gender and age differences in alcohol consumption patterns, drinking contexts and drinking patterns, alcohol-related problems, approaches to prevention and treatment, and drinking indicators in each nation. These analyses demonstrate that no single definition of "normal" drinking, problem drinking, or alcohol dependence can apply equally to all countries or cultures.

Corpus luteum function during the early postpartum interval in lactating rhesus monkeys: in vivo and in vitro response to exogenous gonadotropin.

The response of the postpartum corpus luteum to exogenous gonadotropin was studied in 12 lactating rhesus monkeys given daily injections of either human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG, n = 6) or saline (control, n = 6) for 4 days immediately following parturition. Peripheral blood samples were collected daily. On the 5th day postpartum, luteectomy was performed progesterone production by dispersed luteal cells was examined. Whereas progesterone in the peripheral circulation of control monkeys progressively declined between days 1 and 5 postpartum, progesterone levels increased significantly (p less than 0.025) with the onset of HCG treatment and remained significantly (p less than 0.025) elevated above the controls throughout the period of HCG treatment. However, despite the daily administration of HCG, circulating progesterone levels declined (p less than 0.05) between days 3 and 5 postpartum. The weight of the corpus luteum excised from HCG-treated macaques was significantly (p less than 0.005) greater than that of the controls. Dispersed cells from corpora lutea of saline-treated monkeys produced progesterone in vitro under control conditions (nutrient medium alone) and responded to the addition of high (100 ng/ml), but not low (1 ng/ml), levels of HCG with increased steroidogenesis. Although luteal cells from HCG-treated macaques tended to produce more progesterone in vitro than cells from control monkeys, they also exhibited a 50-fold reduction in sensitivity to HCG in vitro. These data suggest that the corpus luteum of lactating postpartum rhesus monkeys exhibited steroidogenic function which was stimulated by exogenous gonadotropin. However, prolonged exposure of the corpus luteum to high levels of exogenous gonadotropin appeared to produce a state of refractoriness to additional gonadotropic stimuli.

Accountability for alcoholism in American families.

Responsibility for alcoholism is examined within the context of families with an alcoholic parent. The perceptions of alcoholics and their spouses are discussed with respect to who or what is responsible for the etiology of alcoholism, the alcohol-related behaviors, and the consequences of the drinking in terms of the family's reaction to and the eventual resolution of the problem. In their attempt to understand the source of alcoholism and solutions to the problem, families draw upon different explanatory models of responsibility which frequently involve guilt, blame and shame. Brickman et al's theoretical framework for responsibility for helping and coping behaviors is applied to interview data from alcoholic families in the United States with respect to alcoholism. While these families typically do not hold the alcoholic responsible for the presence of the alcoholism in the first place, ultimately they do hold the alcoholic accountable for finding a solution to the alcoholism.

Anthropological perspectives on alcohol and drugs at the turn of the new millennium.

This introduction to the collection provides our thoughts on where alcohol and drug studies in anthropology are going as we enter the new millennium. After commenting briefly on each of the papers that comprise the rest of the volume, we discuss what we see as the most important and exciting issues in the future and give our views on what alcohol and drug studies can offer to medical anthropology, anthropology writ large, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research, and the realm of public policy and practical affairs. We call for a continued study by anthropologists of the whole array of pharmacologically active substances used by humans in different parts of the world, whether or not such studies are situated within medical anthropology. We note that many of these substances have received little attention from anthropologists to date, quite strikingly so in the cases of substances such as marijuana and methamphetamines. We emphasize that most scholars working in the anthropology of alcohol and drugs are concerned with the application of their findings to social problems, and we note that this has been especially true of research on alcoholic beverages and injection drugs. This leads us to a discussion of anthropology's involvement in public health intervention and policy work in a variety of settings. Such involvement is shown to have informed anthropological theory (notably political economic approaches) and to have enriched the methodological toolkits and forms of data analysis anthropologists use. Perhaps more importantly, we argue that such multidisciplinary involvement in applied work is most likely to eventuate in theoretical progress in alcohol and drug studies, since theory in the social sciences is not bound to singular disciplinary approaches. Thus we advocate for a "hybrid vigor" in this specialty area in the years ahead.

Disrupted family rituals; a factor in the intergenerational transmission of alcoholism.

When one or both parents in a family are alcoholics, their children are more likely to become alcoholics if family rituals--surrounding dinner time, evenings, holidays, weekends, vacations and visitors--are disrupted during the period of heaviest parental drinking.

Contributions from anthropology to the study of alcoholism. Overview.

Beginning in the 1950s, we have witnessed a continual acceleration of research activities by anthropologists in the alcohol field. Currently, a substantial number of anthropologists are conducting creative, productive, and eclectic field studies having to do with alcohol use, abuse, and treatment. This overview of this section provides evidence for the proliferation of interest in alcohol research by anthropologists through reports on recent publications, organizational activities, symposia on alcohol topics, and collaborative efforts between anthropologists and colleagues in other fields. Certain themes characterizing the increase in research activities are proposed: the interdisciplinary nature of many anthropology projects and the cross-fertilization of research methods. Each chapter in the section is introduced and placed within the overall context of contemporary alcohol research in anthropology. The overview concludes with a recommendation to expand the role of anthropology in international cross-cultural studies of alcohol.

Family, alcohol, and culture.

During the 1970s and 1980s a small but rich tradition of anthropological and sociological studies of family culture, cultural context, and alcohol has developed. Ideally, ethnographic analysis of a cultural group and in-depth holistic examination of family process are incorporated in such research. In conducting family, culture, and alcohol investigations, researchers are encouraged to reexamine some conceptual assumptions: (1) their working definition of culture; (2) their relative emphasis on family culture or cultural context; (3) their attention to socialization as an active process in the transmission of culture within and across generations; and (4) their adoption of a holistic and cross-generational perspective. To apply this line of research to preventive and intervention strategies, two questions are especially relevant: Why are particular alcohol traditions established and maintained within families? What incentives and constraints from the family's cultural context help create, preserve, and/or terminate particular drinking practices?

Recent developments in alcoholism:family systems.

Over the past decade, research on alcohol and family systems has made notable advances, as reflected by major publications. Concepts elucidated in these writings encompass issues of (1) risk and vulnerability (resiliency, vulnerability, at-risk groups, mediating moderating risk factors, multifactorial determinants, and predisposing and precipitating factors); (2) family process (regulatory mechanisms, homeostasis, morphogenesis, systemic maturation, developmental distortion, family rituals, family identity, and deliberateness); (3) drinking context (sobriety-intoxication cycle, steady-episodic drinking, and alcohol expectancies); (4) alcohol controls (coercive controls, informal drinking controls, and formal controls); and (5) family response to alcoholism (codependence, denial, and definitional careers). In the following review of some of the major contributions to this research tradition, we pay particular attention to how alcohol researchers have refined many of these concepts in light of new empirical data.

HLA class II gene and haplotype diversity in the population of the island of Hvar, Croatia.

The DRB1, DRB3, DRB5, DQA1 and DQB1 allele polymorphisms were analysed in 3 western and 3 eastern villages of the island of Hvar using PCR-SSOP method and 12th International Workshop primers and probes. Three DQB1 alleles (*0304, *0305, *0607) detected in the population of the island of Hvar (HP) have not yet been observed in general Croatian population (GCP). Significant differences were observed between two regions of Hvar for: a) DRB1*0701 allele (p < 0.001), b) DQA1*0201 allele (p < 0.01), and c) DRB1*0101-DQA1*0101-DQB1*0501 haplotypic association (p < 0.05). Two unusual haplotypic associations, which have not yet been described in general Croatian population (GCP), DRB1*0101-DQA1*0102-DQB1*0501 and DRB1*1501-DQA1 *0102-DQB1*0604 were observed in the population from the island of Hvar (HP). Measures of genetic kinship and genetic distances revealed isolation and clusterization which coincides with the known ethnohistorical, as well as biological and biocultural data obtained from a series of previous investigations. The five studied village subpopulations formed two clusters (East-West) to which the far eastern village (with the highest rii of 0.0407) joined later, thus indicating possible impact of historical immigrations from the mainland.

Suggested activities for caregivers of patients with cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease.

The cardiology industry has placed a strong emphasis on the need of all individuals participating in the care of patients with cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disorders to become proactive in their involvement perpetuating the continued works of the medical industry. This article discusses suggested activities.

Depressive symptoms among hospitalized and posthospitalized alcoholics in Yugoslavia.

Two clinical samples of male and female alcoholics undergoing inpatient hospital and posthospital treatment in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, were evaluated for depressive symptomatology and extent of alcoholism, using self-report measures (Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale and Michigan Alcohol Screening Test). Higher levels of depressive symptoms and lower alcoholism scores were reported for the hospital group, in comparison with the posttreatment "Clubs of Treated Alcoholics" group. In the hospital, no significant relationships were found between levels of depression and extent of alcoholic indicators. In the club group, however, those alcoholics who remained depressed (at minimal or mild levels) are also those who perceived themselves as having greater consequences from the alcoholism. The cultural context and psychosocial drinking and postdrinking environments of the alcoholics and their families appear to be important factors in the decline of depressive symptoms among treated, abstinent alcoholics, as well as in the retention of such symptoms among a subset of the sober alcoholics. This suggests that treatment should place a high priority on reordering the social and personal life of the alcoholic and his or her family while also retaining whatever nondrinking social ties that the alcoholic had developed and valued before treatment.