About Alcoholism - Alcoholism Information, Research and Treatment

Alcohol may cause a variety of clinical syndromes involving skeletal muscles, as well as the more familiar ones involving nervous tissue, the heart, and the liver. In reviewing a case of alcoholic myopathy [muscle disease], E. T. O'Brien and P. Goldstraw of the Dudley Road Hospital, Birmingham, England, suggest that this may be a more common condition than is generally realized. The case involved a 46-year-old man with a long drinking history. Clinical and biochemical features were more characteristic of chronic myopathy, but muscle biopsy indicated the acute variety, leading the authors to conclude that there is considerable overlap in the various syndromes. A diagnosis of acute alcoholic myopathy may be overlooked and the symptoms attributed to an alcoholic neuropathy. In acute cases, recovery after abstinence from alcohol is the rule, but in chronic cases recovery occurs in about 50% of the cases if alcohol is stopped.