Lack of the brain linked to alcoholism – Aftonbladet

Research. Swedish researchers have discovered a link between alcoholism and lack of an enzyme in brain which affect the impulse control. The discovery could in future form the basis of drugs that helps severely dependent people.

Under the guidance of Professor Markus Heilig, a research team at Linköping University succeeded in showing how prolonged exposure to alcohol impairs the functions of the brain that affects a person’s impulse control.

the researchers have discovered that a large and prolonged intake of alcohol leads to enzyme PRDM2 not produced in sufficient quantity in the brain’s front lobes.

Explains the mechanism

It has long been suspected that people suffering from alcoholism has an impairment in the brain’s front lobes, but scientists in Linköping is the first to identify the molecular mechanism underlying this.

– If one once developing alcohol problems, can you keep up and then return to normal drinking? Very many can not. They think they can, but then they take a drink and then turns this vulnerability. The lack of ability to control impulses remain very long time and it is probably this mechanism underlies said Markus Heilig.

The discovery will be published in the Nature journal Molecular Psychiatry and the main author of the article is Estelle Barbier, who works at Linköping University. Researchers in Linköping has collaborated with a research team at the University of Miami, where another Swedish Professor Claes Wahlstedt, is the research leader.

Future drugs

Markus Heilig believes that the findings should be the basis for drugs that can help people living with addiction.

– Absolutely, drugs that restore this control. We in Sweden are the molecular neuro-biologists, so to speak, and in Miami, the chemists. They are already trying to make small molecules that could be suitable in pharmaceuticals.

FACTS

Enzyme steering impulse

Several years of research behind the discovery of the link between alcoholism and the lack of the enzyme PRDM2.

Estelle Barbier, senior research engineer at the Center for social and affective Neuroscience at the University of Linköping, has shown how alcohol dependence in rats leads to the production of the enzyme is switched off , leading to impulse control disappears, which in sintur results in the rats will continue consuming alcohol.

When knocking out the enzyme in laboratory animals is not alcohol, it was observed the same lack of impulse control.

30 August 2016 11:53