(Press-News.org) Marketing efforts that encourage mixing caffeinated "energy" drinks with alcohol often try to sway young people to believe that caffeine will offset the sedating effects of alcohol and increase alertness and stamina.
But a new study led by researchers from the Boston University School of Public Health [BUSPH] and the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University has found that the addition of caffeine to alcohol -- mixing Red Bull with vodka, for example -- has no effect on enhancing performance on a driving test or improving sustained attention or reaction times.
"There appears to be little or no protective benefit from the addition of caffeine to alcohol, with respect to the safe execution of activities that require sustained attention with rapid, accurate decisions," says the study, published in the February edition of the journal Addiction.
"The results of this study suggest that public education, via media and warning labels, should be considered regarding the safety of CABs [caffeinated alcoholic beverages], and that regulators should scrutinize energy drink and CAB advertising as it relates to promoting safety-related expectancies."
The study, headed by Jonathan Howland, professor of community health sciences at BUSPH, comes amid increased government scrutiny of energy drinks, particularly when mixed with alcohol. Denmark has banned the sale of energy drinks, and the governments of Canada and Sweden have issued warnings about mixing energy drinks with alcohol.
In 2009, the US Food and Drug Administration issued a statement expressing concern about a lack of safety data on CABs, after survey results showed that the consumption of such beverages correlated with risky behavior among college students.
Howland and his co-authors note that while energy drink companies do not explicitly advertise that their products should be mixed with alcohol, "non-traditional youth-oriented marketing strategies" include claims that such drinks will "enhance attention, endurance, performance, weight loss, and fun, while reducing performance decrements from fatigue or alcohol."
In the new study, the research team randomized 129 participants, ages 21 to 30, into four groups: one group that consumed caffeinated beer; a second that consumed non-caffeinated beer; a third that consumed caffeinated non-alcoholic beer; and a fourth that consumed non-caffeinated, non-alcoholic beer. Those receiving alcohol attained an average blood alcohol level of .12 g% - somewhat higher than 0.8 g%, the legal per se level for driving under the influence.
Thirty minutes after drinking, the participants were tested on a driving simulator and on a sustained attention/reaction time test.
The results indicate that caffeine does not mitigate the impairment effects of alcohol. On the driving test, the effect of alcohol on performance was significant -- but the addition of caffeine did not make a noticeable difference. On the test for sustained attention and reaction times, the addition of caffeine made only a slight difference that the study deemed "borderline significant."
Howland summed up the study results: "It is important that drinkers understand that adding caffeine to alcohol does not enhance safety."
Consumption of energy drinks mixed with alcohol has mushroomed since 2001, with some surveys showing that one in four college students report mixing the two. Some studies have found that caffeine reverses alcohol-related performance impairment on tests of reaction time, attention and psychomotor speed, but not on error rates. Other studies have found that caffeine does not significantly impact alcohol-induced impairment of motor coordination.
Howland said the new study was one of the first to provide "a controlled evaluation of the acute effects of caffeine on driving impairment" after drinking to intoxication levels. The institutional review boards of Boston Medical Center, Brown University and the University of Michigan approved the study.
INFORMATION:
In addition to Howland, researchers on the study include: Damaris J. Rohsenow of the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University; J. Todd Arnedt of the Sleep and Chronophysiology Laboratory of the University of Michigan Medical School; Daniel J. Gottleib of the Boston University School of Medicine; and Caleb A. Bliss, Sarah K. Hunt, Tamara Vehige Calise, Timothy Heeren, Michael Winter and Caroline Littlefield, all of BUSPH.
A video of Prof. Howland discussing the study is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjjlPeldmfs
The full study is available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.2011.106.issue-2/issuetoc
Prof. Howland can be reached at: jhowl@bu.edu or (617) 638-5158
New results from a Baylor University study show that different behaviors and strategies lead some families to cope better and emerge stronger after a weather-related event.
Dr. Sara Alexander, an applied social anthropologist at Baylor who conducts much of her research in Central America, studied different households in several coastal communities in Belize. While climate change has been an emerging topic of interest to the world community, little scientific data exists on exactly how people respond to different climate-related "shocks" and events such as more intense ...
University of Toronto astronomers are in Paris this week as part of an international conference announcing the first scientific results of the Plank space telescope mission.
Launched in May 2009, the telescope has nearly completed three of its four planned surveys of the entire sky, providing astronomers a glimpse of conditions near the beginning of the Universe and providing data that will help answer the big questions: How was the Universe formed? How has it evolved to its present form? And what shape will it take in future?
"Planck has worked flawlessly to give us ...
Some of the most intense emotions people feel occur during a conflict in a romantic relationship. Now, new research from Baylor University psychologists shows that how each person perceives the other partner's emotion during a conflict greatly influences different types of thoughts, feelings and reactions in themselves.
Dr. Keith Sanford, a clinical psychologist and an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor, College of Arts and Sciences, and his research team studied 105 college students in romantic relationships as they communicated through different ...
New software has been developed at Queen Mary, University of London's Centre for Digital Music, giving drummers the freedom to speed up or slow down the pace of any pre-programmed music, the material following their lead.
It means that drummers will no longer have to keep time with a click track and the set beat of pre-recorded tracks that are used during many live performances and studio sessions.
The software has been developed by Dr Andrew Robertson from Queen Mary, University of London's School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science. Dr Robertson's work ...
Scientists have found that the pleasurable experience of listening to music releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain important for more tangible pleasures associated with rewards such as food, drugs and sex. The new study from The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital – The Neuro at McGill University also reveals that even the anticipation of pleasurable music induces dopamine release [as is the case with food, drug, and sex cues]. Published in the prestigious journal Nature Neuroscience, the results suggest why music, which has no obvious survival value, ...
New York, NY, January 12, 2011 – Coronary syndromes vary in severity, ranging from unstable angina, non-ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI), to ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), the most severe diagnosis. Little data exist about changing trends in acute myocardial infarction and whether death rates are increasing or decreasing. In a study published in the January 2011 issue of The American Journal of Medicine, investigators found that STEMI rates decreased and one-year post-discharge death rates decreased in NSTEMI and STEMI patients.
"The ...
Scientists are reporting that so-called "thirdhand smoke" — the invisible remains of cigarette smoke that deposits on carpeting, clothing, furniture and other surfaces — may be even more of a health hazard than previously believed. The study, published in ACS' journal, Environmental Science & Technology, extends the known health risks of tobacco among people who do not smoke but encounter the smoke exhaled by smokers or released by smoldering cigarette butts.
Yael Dubowski and colleagues note that thirdhand smoke is a newly recognized contributor to the health risks of ...
Scientists are reporting a scientific basis for the long-standing belief that a widely used non-prescription drug in China and certain other countries can prevent and treat cataracts, a clouding of the lens of the eye that is a leading cause of vision loss worldwide. Their study appears in Inorganic Chemistry, an ACS journal.
In the study, Tzu-Hua Wu, Fu-Yung Huang, Shih-Hsiung Wu and colleagues note that eye drops containing pirenoxine, or PRX, have been reputed as a cataract remedy for almost 60 years. Currently, the only treatment for cataracts in Western medicine ...
New Orleans, LA – Research conducted by Iaroslav Savtchouk, a graduate student, and S. June Liu, PhD, Associate Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, has shown that a single exposure to acute stress affected information processing in the cerebellum – the area of the brain responsible for motor control and movement coordination and also involved in learning and memory formation. The work is published in the January 12, 2011 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.
The researchers found that a five-minute exposure to the odor of a ...
Adding customer service representatives to a computerized radiology workflow management system means improved patient and referring physician satisfaction and increased radiologist efficiency, an analysis of a program at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati finds.
Seven customer service representatives now staff the radiology reading room from 7:00 am – 11:00 pm daily and are responsible for ensuring that referring physicians receive completed radiology reports quickly.
This means that the referring physician can get the report while the patient is still ...
