Colour-Blindness and Alcohol Addiction

Impairment of color spatial vision in chronic alcoholism measured by psychophysical methods

“…Such deleterious effect are possible if retinal ganglion cell loss related to chronic alcoholism (see below) progresses from preferential damage to P and K ganglion cells involved with color vision in the first stages of the disease to include the several ganglion cell classes involved in achromatic vision in later stages (Silveira et al, 2004;Silveira et al, 2008 Comparison with previous studies Acquired color vision losses have frequently been observed among chronic alcoholics (Cruz-Coke & Varela, 1965;Reynolds, 1979;Mergler et al, 1988;Braun & Richer, 1993;Kapitany et al, 1993;Shimozono, Townsend, Ilsen, & Bright, 1998). All of these studies used the Ishihara pseudoisochromatic test or color arrangement tests to evaluate color vision performance.…”

“…Some studies have shown that subjects with a clinical history of long-term ethanol abuse have color vision impairment (Cruz-Coke & Varela, 1965;Smith, 1972;Mergler, Blain, Lemaire, & Lalande, 1988;Hill & Toffolon, 1990). Cruz-Coke and Varela (1965) evaluated color vision in a group of 100 patients diagnosed with hepatic cirrhosis attributable to chronic alcoholism and found that 18 were color blind (Cruz-Coke & Varela, 1965).…”

“…Cruz-Coke and Varela (1965) evaluated color vision in a group of 100 patients diagnosed with hepatic cirrhosis attributable to chronic alcoholism and found that 18 were color blind (Cruz-Coke & Varela, 1965). Color vision impairment caused by nutritional disorders associated with chronic alcoholism has been diagnosed using Farnsworth-Munsell 28-hue or 100-hue colorarrangement tests (Hill & Toffolon, 1990).…”

Relationship of Color Blindness to Alcoholic Liver Damage

“…The difference observed in the prevalence of defects revealed by the HRR test in the first studies of Cruz-Coke [1,2] and CruzCoke and Varela [4] and in Ihe later work by Varela et al [10] referred in table I deserves a special comment. In the first studies by Cruz-Coke [1, [41 the greatest number of error was observed with HRR plate 3.…”

“…Later studies by Cruz-Coke and Varela [4) demonstrated that color vision defect was also associated with alcoholism in 100 pa tients whose liver condition was not studied and who were classi fied as gamma or delta alcoholics according to Jellinek [5]. In this group the proportion with unclassified color vision disturbance was higher than in the study of Cruz-Coke on liver cirrhosis.…”