(Press-News.org) A new study by investigators from Mass General Brigham suggests that heavy alcohol use may lead to more severe brain bleeds and cause long-term brain vessel damage at a younger age. The team’s results, based on patients treated for brain bleeds at Massachusetts General Hospital, are published online in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
“The brain bleed is one of the most lethal and disabling conditions known to human beings,” said corresponding author Edip Gurol, MD, a clinician investigator in the Mass General Brigham Department of Neurology. “They come on suddenly, cause severe damage, and often leave patients with life-changing disabilities. It’s one of the most difficult conditions to recover from.”
A brain bleed (also called an intracerebral hemorrhage or hemorrhagic stroke) happens when a blood vessel inside the brain bursts. Up to 50% of people with this condition die, and 30% are severely disabled. Only 20% of people who sustain a brain bleed can take care of themselves independently a full year later, Gurol said.
The study used a cohort of 1,600 patients admitted between 2003 and 2019 to Massachusetts General Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, who had a brain bleed that was not a result of an injury or trauma. They used CT scans to assess the size and location of the brain bleed. They checked MRI scans for signs of damage to the brain's small blood vessels.
About 7% of the brain bleed patients reported consuming three or more drinks a day. Compared with those who didn’t drink, the people who drank heavily were younger when the brain bleed happened (average age 64 versus 75) and had bleeds that were about 70% bigger. They were twice as likely to have a bleed deep inside the brain or one that spread into the brain’s fluid-filled spaces. The researchers saw that even lower levels of alcohol intake, two drinks per day, was significantly associated with younger age of onset of a brain bleed.
People who drank heavily had lower platelet counts (cell fragments that help blood clot) and higher blood pressure when they arrived to the hospital. They were more likely to show evidence of damage in the tiny blood vessels in the brain, which is linked to dementia, memory loss, and walking problems. It's also a major risk factor for a brain bleed.
The researchers hypothesize that heavy alcohol use raises blood pressure, damaging the small blood vessels in the brain, making them weak and more likely to leak or burst. On top of that, lowered platelet counts make it harder for the body to stop bleeding. Together, these factors greatly increase the risk of a brain bleed.
Drinking less is a key part of stroke and brain health prevention efforts, the researchers said.
“We now know that heavy drinking leads to larger, earlier brain bleeds,” said Gurol. “Minimizing or stopping alcohol use is an important step to lower that risk. Even for people at relatively low brain bleeding risk, limiting alcohol consumption to no more than three drinks per week may be an effective measure to protect against all types of stroke and to preserve both brain and cardiovascular health.”
This study has some limitations. Alcohol use was self-reported, the number of people who drank heavily was small, it took place at a single hospital, and the cohort investigated was mostly white patients. It also captured only one point in time, so it cannot show cause and effect. Future research with larger, more diverse groups should explore how different levels of alcohol use affect small vessel disease, brain aging, and the risk of blockage-type strokes.
Authorship: In addition to Gurol, Mass General Brigham authors include Mette Foldager Hindsholm, Elif Gokcal, Ofer Rotschild, Zora Dipucchio, Anand Viswanathan, Steven M. Greenberg, Christopher D. Anderson, Jonathan Rosand, and Joshua N. Goldstein. Additional authors include Alvin S. Das, Andrea Morotti, and Claus Ziegler Simonsen.
Disclosures: Gurol reported research grants from the NIH (NINDS/NIA R01NS11452, NS 083711), Boston Scientific Corporation, AVID, and Pfizer, and received compensation for advisory board participation from Bristol Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, and Novartis. Anderson reported receiving research support from the NIH, the American Heart Association, and Bayer AG; serving as a consultant for MPM BioImpact and ApoPharma; and serving on the Editorial Board for Neurology. Rosand reported receiving funding from the NIH and the American Heart Association and consulting for the National Football League and Eli Lilly. Morotti reported consulting for EMC-REG International and AstraZeneca. All other authors report no disclosures relevant to the manuscript.
Funding: This study was funded by National Institutes of Health (NINDS/NIA R01NS114526, NS 083711).
Paper cited: Hindsholm MFet al. “Effects of Heavy Alcohol Use on Acute Intracerebral Hemorrhage and Cerebral Small Vessel Disease” Neurology DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000214348
###
About Mass General Brigham
Mass General Brigham is an integrated academic health care system, uniting great minds to solve the hardest problems in medicine for our communities and the world. Mass General Brigham connects a full continuum of care across a system of academic medical centers, community and specialty hospitals, a health insurance plan, physician networks, community health centers, home care, and long-term care services. Mass General Brigham is a nonprofit organization committed to patient care, research, teaching, and service to the community. In addition, Mass General Brigham is one of the nation’s leading biomedical research organizations with several Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals. For more information, please visit massgeneralbrigham.org.
END
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2025
MINNEAPOLIS — Older adults who have a heart attack may be more likely to develop epilepsy later in life, according to a study published November 5, 2025 in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. While the study shows a link between these conditions, it does not prove cause and effect.
“In middle-aged and older adults, vascular disease can block, weaken or narrow blood vessels, and it often affects multiple parts of the body at once,” ...
A new study from researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health finds that common fungal species may be adapting to higher temperatures in warmer sites within cities compared to cooler sites in the same city.
The findings could signify that urban fungi could one day evolve into disease-causing pathogens. The researchers note that this is a proof-of-principle study, designed to investigate whether fungal species may adapt differently across sites within the same city. While the new findings suggest that they might, the researchers emphasize that more studies, with more samples in different cities, are needed.
Fungi ...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, November 5, 2025
Contact:
Jillian McKoy, jpmckoy@bu.edu
Michael Saunders, msaunder@bu.edu
##
The rise in virtual research since the COVID-19 pandemic has created opportunities for researchers to expand and diversify clinical trials, but it has also opened up avenues for fraudulent participation in these studies. A new study led by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) researchers directed by Michael Stein, chair and professor of the Department of Health Law, Policy & Management ...
Parents' attachment style may be linked with risk of parental burnout, especially when associated with difficulty in understanding and identifying their emotions
Article URL: http://plos.io/3Lv62sL
Article title: Alexithymia and attachment dimensions in relation to parental burnout: A structural equation modelling approach
Author countries: Poland
Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work. END ...
Abnormal repetitive behaviors in mice are strongly linked to multiple biomarkers of oxidative stress, which occurs when antioxidants cannot counteract the effects of harmful molecules in the body, according to a study published November 5, 2025, in the open-access journal PLOS One by Kendall Coden and Dr. Joseph Garner of Stanford University, U.S. However, more research is needed to test whether antioxidants can prevent or treat these behaviors.
Stereotypies are abnormal, repetitive, and seemingly goal-less behaviors that are prevalent within the animal kingdom. They have been documented in nearly every captive mammal and bird species, including laboratory ...
Belonging to more than one marginalized group can make building and maintaining social connections significantly harder, often in ways that go far beyond a simple sum of disadvantages. A new study shows how inequalities in social ties don’t just add up – they can amplify one another.
Why do some people have more friendships, more support, and more opportunities – while others seem to have far fewer? Is it simply a matter of personal choices, or do structural patterns play a deeper role?
For individuals who belong to a disadvantaged social group, forming connections tends to be more ...
From stirring milk in your coffee to fearsome typhoon gales, rotating turbulent flows are everywhere. Yet, these spinning currents are as scientifically complex as they are banal. Describing, modelling, and predicting turbulent flows have important implications across many fields, from weather forecasting to studying the formation of planets in the accretion disk of nascent stars.
Two formulations are at the heart of the study of turbulence: Kolmogorov’s universal framework for small-scale turbulence, which describes how energy propagates and dissipates through ...
Aggression and self-harm often co-occur in individuals with a history of early-life trauma—a connection that has largely been documented by self-reporting in research and clinical settings.
Adding to this connection, individuals treated for self-inflicted injuries are five times more likely to engage in excessive aggression.
What’s happening in the brain to tie these two behaviors together?
A new study by Sora Shin, an assistant professor in the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC’s Center for Neurobiology Research, has identified a brain circuit that changes after trauma. The study was published Nov. 5 in Science ...
Article Summary
Certain immune cells help breast cancer resist hormone therapy.
Sylvester researchers studied how blocking those cells with a new drug combo may help.
The approach could lead to better treatment options for tough-to-treat hormone therapy resistant breast cancer cases.
MIAMI, FLORIDA (EMBARGOED UNTIL NOV 5, 2025, AT 2:00 P.M. ET) – In preclinical studies, researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, have tested a new combination ...
A collaborative research team has discovered that the Southern Ocean releases substantially more carbon dioxide (CO2) during the dark austral winter than previously thought. Their new study reveals that this winter outgassing has been underestimated by up to 40%.
The team comprises researchers from the Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources (SIO-MNR), and the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology (NIGLAS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Their findings were published in Science Advances on ...
