Effects of Hangover on Psychomotor Skills Related to Driving: Modification by Fructose and Glucose

Abstract

Thirty healthy male volunteers drank ethyl alcohol (1.75 g/kg) from 6 p. m. to 9 p. m., which resulted in hangover the next morning, and 10 subjects served as controls. The twenty subjects, who drank alcohol, received glucose or fructose during the same evening (1.0 g/kg) or on the following morning (0.5 g/kg). In the hangover phase psychomotor performance was recorded by a choice reaction test, two coordination tests and an attention test. The intensity of the hangover was graded subjectively and objectively. Blood ethanol, acetaldehyde and glucose concentrations were analysed. The testing procedure was repeated at 8, 10 and 12 a. m. Ethanol, administered alone, increased significantly the number of mistakes on the choice reaction test in hangover phase, but this effect was abolished by the simultaneous administration of sugar. On the other hand, after the combined administration of ethanol and sugars the number of mistakes and mistake percentage on one coordination test were increased. The etiology on the impaired psychomotor skill during the hangover period is probably not directly related to the pathophysiology of the hangover, as there was no correlation between the impairment of the psychomotor performance and the intensity of the hangover of the subjects.

Hangover Predicts Residual Alcohol Effects on Psychomotor Vigilance the Morning After Intoxication

“…It is unclear why our result differed from those to [37] who found no correlation between hangover and psychomotor impairment the day after intoxication. We note, however, that their study was small compared to ours (30 vs. 95 participants) and thus results might have been affected by low statistical power.…”

“…Residual effects have been found on simulated industrial work tasks [49] driving-related skills and driving [37,19,45] and simulated aircraft piloting [25,26,27,30,42,43,51,50] other studies, however, did not find occupational performance effects [10,7,8,14,33,39]. Using neurocognitive tasks, adverse effects were found for codification and identification tasks [28] immediate and delayed (1h) free recall [46] visual, memory and intellectual processing [17,24] time-reaction error in a go-no-go task [1] sustained attention/reaction time [12] and choice reaction time [24,18], although negative results were found for some neurocognitive measures [11,20,22,46].…”

“…Two previous studies investigated the relationship of hangover severity to performance. One study found no association between hangover (using a measure of unknown reliability or validity) and psychomotor performance, as measured by choice reaction time, motor coordination, and attention [37]. The other, described below, found that hangover severity (measured on a validated scale) correlated with sustained attention/reaction time (univariate correlation), suggesting that hangover symptoms might contribute to impairment the day after intoxication [35].…”

The Alcohol Hangover Research Group Consensus Statement on Best Practice in Alcohol Hangover Research

“…The observer-rated physical signs had a very low score, no data were presented on the value of individual signs, and Seppala et al . [57] reported that the physical signs were not valid. Chapman [46] also validated a number of individual hangover symptoms in his experimental studies but no scale development work was done.…”

The Acute Hangover Scale: A new measure of immediate hangover symptoms

“…In order to conduct experimental investigations of determinants and behavioral correlates of hangover, a reliable and valid measure of hangover symptoms is needed for use in acute situations. Early experimental investigations of hangover using individual signs and symptoms without scale development validated certain subjective symptoms whereas objective signs of hangover were not significantly increased (Chapman, 1970;Seppala et al, 1976;Ylikahri et al, 1974).…”