Effects of ethyl alcohol on the electrooculogram and color vision

Abstract

Color vision tests and electrooculography (EOG) were performed in 6 male and 2 female healthy young trichromatic volunteers between 60 and 130 min after finishing consumption of ethyl alcohol leading to blood levels of approximately 0.07% to 0.16%. The average number of errors in the desaturated Panel D-15 arrangement test rose from 0.86 to 2.0; the average error score in the Farnsworth-Munsell 100-Hue test rose from 26 to 79. The axis of errors in both tests was clearly tritanopic and tetartanopic, pointing to a specific effect of ethyl alcohol on the function of blue-sensitive cones and/or their interaction with longer wavelength-sensitive cones. Ethyl alcohol decreased the size of the light-peak, apparently in a dose-dependent fashion, in each of the 16 eyes by values between 3% and 79%. The effect of alcohol on the EOG light peak was stronger between 30 and 95 min (23% decrease in average) than between 95 and 130 min (14% decrease) after the finish of alcohol administration.

Blue-yellow deficiency in workers exposed to low concentrations of organic solvents

“…However, there are some studies on organic solvents that make a temporal assignment possible. Ethanol has been shown to cause acute dyschromatopsia of the blue-yellow type after ingestion (Russel et al 1980;Zrenner et al 1986). The color vision impairment of 20 workers exposed to styrene did not improve after a holiday of 1 month (Gobba et al 1991).…”

Effects of Ethanol on Photoreceptors and Visual Function in Developing Zebrafish

“…The OKR analysis indicated that acute ethanol exposure affected visual function in zebrafish embryos, consistent with the changes in color vision that are observed in humans after an acute exposure to alcohol. 34,35 Normal light-adapted visual function recovered when the animals were allowed to swim in an ethanol-free environment for several hours.…”

Experimental exposure to methylformate and its neurobehavioral effects

“…Broadwell et al [5] found reduced blue-yellow color vision after exposure to solvent mixtures. Zrenner et al [39] also con®rmed earlier ®ndings of reduced blueyellow vision after ethanol intake. In view of these references, we did not use the red-green color vision test as the optimal choice.…”