Drinking too much alcohol can suppress your cravings

Agency
MEXICO.- One of the many challenges in the fight against alcohol dependence and other substance abuse disorders is the risk of relapse, even after progressing on the pathway. recovery. Even annoying fruit flies thirst for alcohol, and because the molecular signals involved in the formation of reward memories and avoid the memories is very similar to those of humansthey are a good model for the study.

New research on flies reveals that Alcohol diverts this way of forming memories and modifies the proteins expressed in neurons, forming cravings. As reported in an article on the work published Thursday in Neuron magazine, only a few glasses in one night alter the formation of memories at the fundamental molecular level.

The lead author of the article, Karla Kaun, assistant professor in neuroscience at Brown University, USA, worked with a team of university students, technicians and postdoctoral researchers to discover Molecular signaling pathways and changes in the expression of the genes involved. in the creation and maintenance of reward memorabilia, said the Excelsior news portal on its website.

You may also be interested: Addict to nicotine? These three juices will help you quit

One of the things I want to understand is why drugs can produce really rewarding memories when they're actually neurotoxins, "says Kaun, an affiliate of the Brown & Brain Research Institute. Carney. All drugs of abuse (alcohol, opiates, cocaine, methamphetamine) they have undesirable side effects. They cause nausea or hangover in people, why do we find them so rewarding? Why do we remember good things that concern them and not bad ones? My team is trying to understand at the molecular level what drugs do to memories and why they crave smoking. "

Once researchers understand what molecules are changing when cravings are formed, they can find out how to help alcoholics and addicted to recover by decreasing the duration of memories fancy or intensity, according to Kaun.

Fruit flies have only 100,000 neurons, while humans have more than 100 billion. The small scale, as well as the fact that generations of scientists have developed genetic tools to manipulate the activity of these neurons in the circuit and at the molecular level, have turned the fruit fly into an ideal model organism for the first time. 39; team. Kaun will separate the genes and molecular signaling pathways involved in alcohol reward recipes, says this expert.

Emily Petruccelli, a postdoctoral researcher, is now an assistant professor and has her own laboratory at the University of Southern Illinois in the United States. the team used genetic tools selectively disable key genes while training flies to find out where to find alcohol. This allowed them to see what proteins were needed for this rewarding behavior.