Alfhild Grönbladh is awarded SEK 1.7 million for research on alcohol, caffeine, pain and anxiety

Why are chronic pain and alcohol habits an important combination to explore?
Chronic pain is often treated with opioids, which, when combined with alcohol, can cause serious consequences, in the worst cases leading to a fatal outcome. How much alcohol patients with chronic pain actually drink is not completely charted, and now we will study it via self-reported consumption and physical tests.

What do you hope your conclusions will add?
Today, chronic pain is one of our major public health problems, and it may be a signal for healthcare to increase its attention to alcohol habits among pain patients who are treated with opioids. The fact that we will determine alcohol consumption using both questionnaires and biomarkers can in turn provide a valuable indicator of the reliability of self-reporting, and we would like to express our gratitude to Systembolaget's Alcohol Research Council, whose generous support makes this important work possible.

With a grant from the Åke Wiberg Foundation, you will also map potential connections between caffeine and anxiety. How could they be connected?
We have previously shown that animals with anxiety-like behavior have a lower expression of the receptors that adenosine – a neurotransmitter in the central nervous system that helps stimulate tiredness – binds to. Studies also confirm that caffeine inhibits this reaction, and we will now explore whether caffeine can drive brain mechanisms that generate anxiety. This is a question that is becoming increasingly relevant, not least regarding the high consumption of energy drinks among adolescents, and in our work we will therefore focus on the young brain.

According to media reports, caffeine can increase the risk of pretty much everything from miscarriage and high cholesterol levels to suicide. Is this really possible?
Most likely, it's primarily a question of dose, but given the enormous quantities of coffee we consume in the world, the question is justified, and the answer is that no one knows for sure. Despite numerous studies, there are still no consistent results, but a reasonable assumption is that we are all – as with every drug – differently vulnerable to caffeine. Therefore, we must find out what high concentrations of caffeine can actually expose our brain to, especially in young people, which makes continued research on these issues necessary.

text: Magnus Alsne, photo: Magnus Alsne a o