Sweet Tooth, Personality Traits Diagnose Alcoholism
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/05/980521080455.htm

CHAPEL HILL, NC -- A new study by researchers at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies
offers compelling evidence that a strong preference for intense
sweet taste combined with a particular personality profile can help
diagnose alcoholism with great accuracy.

The findings, published this week in the journal Alcoholism:
Clinical and Experimental Research, also may pave the way for
development of an easy-to- administer diagnostic test for
determining the risk of developing alcoholism.

"So far, the combination of a 'sweet test' and a written survey
called the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire which evaluates
the levels of novelty seeking, harm avoidance, and reward
dependence, allowed an accurate diagnosis of alcoholism in 85
percent of the subjects studied," says research fellow and study
leader Dr. Alexey Kampov-Polevoy. "Actually, the word alcohol is
never mentioned throughout this testing routine, which takes about
15 to 20 minutes. No other diagnostic test for alcoholism shows
such results."

The study extends previous UNC-CH work in animals and humans.
Originally, in a study in rats, Kampov-Polevoy and his colleagues
showed that the intake of sweet saccharin solutions could predict
alcohol intake with extreme accuracy. Unlike rats that do not drink
alcohol, rats with a genetic predisposition to high alcohol intake
consume large amounts of sweet solutions (three times their normal
fluid intake). Moreover, the alcohol-drinking rats preferred more
concentrated sweet solutions than alcohol-avoiding rats. The latter
finding was then replicated last year in humans. In a simple taste
test, 65 percent of alcoholics said they preferred the most
concentrated of five sugar solutions offered, which was three times
sweeter than regular cola. Only 16 percent of the nonalcoholics
showed a similar preference for the strongest solution while the
others preferred much weaker sweet solutions.

Kampov-Polevoy says a strong liking for sweets alone is not enough
to accurately indicate the presence of alcoholism. Only those
sweet-liking individuals who have a certain personality profile are
vulnerable to the development of alcoholism. In the new study, 52
men who had never been diagnosed with alcoholism and 26 recovering
alcoholics took the sweet preference test and completed the TPQ.
Sweet-liking alcoholics scored high on harm-avoidance and
novelty-seeking, while sweet-liking nonalcoholics tended to score
low on these traits. Neither group could be differentiated by their
scores on reward dependence.

Says Kampov-Polevoy: "You may say that the sweet-liking alcoholic
is a person who might love to sky dive but is afraid to go to the
airplane." He explains that a major component of novelty seeking is
"impulsivity," while depressive features and anxiety underlie harm
avoidance. "It seems that the combination of a preference for the
strong pleasurable stimuli [sweets] with impaired control of
impulses puts that person in trouble," he says. "On the other hand,
sweet-liking without high novelty-seeking may be a characteristic
of the normal behavior. Probably this is why sweet-liking
individuals from the control group scored on the novelty-seeking
scale even below the average level."

Kampov-Polevoy says studies now under way provide some evidence
that the "sweet test" may be used to determine a genetic risk of
alcoholism. The researcher says these findings may lead to the
development of an easy-to-administer diagnostic test for alcoholism
risk. Such a test would provide the opportunity for early
preventive intervention through education and behavior change.
"Believe me, it is much easier to prevent alcoholism that to treat
it," says Kampov-Polevoy."

Forwarded by:
David T. Courtwright
University of North Florida
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