Estimates of the prevalence of alcohol use and evaluation of its effect on attention functioning among truck drivers that travel in highways in the State of São Paulo

Abstract

Background and rationale: Brazil occupies the eighth position among the countries with higher traffic accidents (TA) rates. In São Paulo, truck drivers are involved in at least two out of every ten traffic accidents. The use of alcohol is a contributing factor to TA occurrence, possibly because of its effects on cognition. Very little is yet known about the effects of alcohol on drivers cognitive functioning, as well as in their attention functioning. Aims: estimate alcohol prevalence and pattern of use among truck drivers that drive in São Paulo State highways, as well as assess the alcohol effects over attention functioning and its variation depending on the alcohol use pattern. Work plan and execution chronogram: the execution of this project is scheduled for 12 months. Methods: One hundred drivers will be recruited as a convenience sample. After the agreement to participate, the participants will be solicited to answer a structured questionnaire containing personal, occupational, anthropometric, as well as alcohol use questions. The attention functioning will be assessed trough the performances in neuropsychological tests, which are validated for the Brazilian population. Results Analysis: the data will be codified and stored in the Epi-info 6.0 program, and the descriptive and inferential analysis will be made using the program Stata 8.0 for Windows. Afterwards, the participants will be grouped according to alcohol pattern use and assessed regarding their performance on sustained and alternating attention tests. The null hypothesis will be rejected when p<0.05. Key-words: Ethanol; drugs; cognition; attention ; epidemiology; truck drivers. (AU)