Cognitive recovery with abstinence and its relationship to family history for alcoholism

The relationship between drinking relapse and family history for alcoholism to cognitive functioning was investigated in alcoholics who completed a 28-day inpatient treatment program.

The current study examined 144 primary alcoholics who completed a battery of cognitive tests on admission to treatment and at a 3-4 month follow-up visit. Participants were classified as either family history positive (FH+) (n = 86) or family history negative (FH-) (n = 58) based on information on alcohol dependence in first degree relatives. The subjects were further classified as drinkers (n = 56) or abstainers (n = 88) at follow-up, based upon information gathered about their drinking practices during the interval.

There were no differences between the groups based on family history status at admission to treatment. Comparisons made at follow-up revealed that the abstainers' (both FH+ and FH-) performance improved. The FH+ drinkers' performance was worse than that of both the FH- drinkers and the FH+ abstainers at follow-up. The poor performance of the FH+ drinkers relative to the FH- drinkers was not attributable to differences in drinking consumption during the test-retest interval.

These results suggest that alcoholics who maintain abstinence following treatment show improvement on cognitive testing at follow-up; both FH+ and FH- abstainers showed improvement, indicating that a positive family history of alcoholism does not impede recovery that occurs with abstinence. The most important finding, however, is that the FH+ drinkers show greater deterioration at follow-up compared to the other groups.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)