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A new University of Virginia study indicates that people who are married, or cohabitating, generally tend to drink less -- that's fewer drinks, and less frequently. The findings also show that singles are more inclined to drink more often, and in larger quantities. "Intimate relationships cause a decline in alcohol consumption" is the gist of the finding, according to lead study author Diana Dinescu, a UVA Ph.D. candidate in clinical psychology. Her study -- conducted with other researchers at UVA, as well as at the University of Southern California and Washington State University -- compared the reported drinking patterns of twins in and out of relationships. The findings appear in the  Journal of Family Psychology . Previous studies have shown that married adults drink less than single or divorced people, and Dinescu and her colleagues examined the behaviors of 2,425 same-sex twin pairs to see if these findings held up among people who share genetic and familial...

A new review in  Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology , which explores the evidence, suggests this approach may be worth pursuing. Alcohol accounts for significant death and disability worldwide. Among those aged 20-39, nearly one-quarter of deaths can be attributed to alcohol, according to the World Health Organization. "The idea is that a small reduction in alcohol - - such as beer with four per cent ethanol content versus six per cent -- would reduce alcohol intake per drinker even if the same overall amount of beverage is consumed," says Dr. Jürgen Rehm, lead author and Director of the Institute for Mental Health Policy Research at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, Canada. A decrease in ethanol, the most harmful ingredient in alcoholic beverages, would be expected to lead to lower blood alcohol levels in drinkers. And this could reduce immediate harms such as injuries or accidents, as well as alcohol-related chronic diseases that deve...

After changing little during the early 2000s, cocaine use in the USA began a downward shift at the time of the sodium permanganate regulation. In association with that regulation, there was an estimated decrease of approximately 1.9 million past-year cocaine users (a drop of 32%) and 0.7 million past-month cocaine users (-29%). During the period examined following the sodium permanganate regulation (December 2006 to December 2014), there was little or no recovery in the number of cocaine users. Methamphetamine use in the USA also began a downward shift at the time of the chemical company closure. In association with Mexico's 03/2007 chemical company closure, there was an estimated decrease of approximately half a million past-year methamphetamine users (-35%), and a decrease of a little more than a quarter million past-month methamphetamine users (-45%). During the period examined following closure of the chemical company (March 2007 to December 2014), methamphetamine user num...

A brand new technique of creating painkillers could result in various medicines with out the unintended effects, say researchers. Credit score: © stevecuk / Fotolia A global crew of researchers -- led by scientists at UC San Francisco, Stanford College, the College of North Carolina (UNC), and the Friedrich-Alexander College Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany -- has developed a brand new opioid drug candidate that blocks ache with out triggering the damaging unintended effects of present prescription painkillers. Their secret? Ranging from scratch -- with computational methods that allow them discover greater than 4 trillion completely different chemical interactions. In a brand new research -- printed on-line August 17, 2016 in  Nature  -- the researchers used the newly deciphered atomic construction of the mind's "morphine receptor" to custom-engineer a novel drug candidate that blocked ache as successfully as morphine in mouse experiments, however didn...