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Booze
'Benders' May
Hamper Brain Cell Growth
Excerpt
By
E. J. Mundell, Reuters
Health
NEW YORK (Reuters Health)
- Hammered, tanked, wasted: by any name, all-night drinking binges
are no party for the brain, researchers say.
``With binge drinking, one is not only damaging their brain,
but also interfering with its repair,'' according to Dr. Kim Nixon
of the Center for Alcohol Studies at the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill.
Her team's study of inebriated rats found that new cell growth
in the brain's key memory center fell to below half of normal
following extended periods of intoxication.
The findings were presented Wednesday in San Diego, California,
at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.
In their study, the North Carolina investigators gave adult male
rats enough alcohol over 4 days to cause their blood-alcohol level
to rise to 0.35%--corresponding to nearly four times the legal
driving limit of 0.08%. The researchers then injected the animals
with a chemical ``tag'' used to track the formation of new brain
cells.
Following this chemical trail, Nixon's team compared new brain
cell formation in rats unexposed to alcohol with that of rats
that went on the 4-day binge. They focused on cell formation in
the hippocampus, a part of the brain Nixon described as ``extremely
important to learning and memory processes.''
In the brains of rats killed one day after the binge, ``we found
that the number of newly-formed cells was decreased by 57% when
compared to the no-alcohol group,'' she said. In animals killed
one month after alcohol exposure ``the number of newly-formed
cells was decreased by 97%.''
Speaking with Reuters Health, Nixon noted that ``in most aspects
of structure and function, the rat and human brain are quite similar.''
And when fed relatively high doses of alcohol, rats display behaviors
that resemble those seen in drunken humans. The study findings
suggest, therefore, ``that high doses of alcohol negatively affect
the formation of new brain cells'' in humans, as well, according
to Nixon.
Of course, most people do not participate in 4-day benders. But
Nixon said her team has already completed research that suggests
that just a few hours of drunkenness can trigger a significant
reduction in neural cell formation, at least in rats. These rodents
were ``behaviorally impaired, staggering--some even passed out,''
she said. ``This particular amount (of alcohol) is on the high
end of 'hammered' but could be typical of a problem drinker on
a Friday night.''
The exact mechanism by which excessive drinking inhibits cell
growth in the hippocampus--and, potentially, other brain centers--remains
unclear. Nixon suspects that alcohol may impact on the function
of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors, found on the surface
of brain cells and thought to be a key player in the generation
of new cells.
``We will begin addressing the mechanism question within the
next few months,'' she said.
Reference
Source 89
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