Health & Fitness - Alcohol: More than a social lubricant

ArcaMax Publishing > Lifestyles > Health & Fitness

Your email adddress is safe with us. View our Privacy policy.

Ergonomics Guide:

Save yourself eye strain and back pain with our guide to ergonomics.

The Funnies:

Get free jokes, comics, and more! See them all on
our funnies page

Weather:

Accurate national, regional, and local forecasts on the weather page

Alcohol: More than a social lubricant

LA JOLLA, Calif. (UPI) -- Alcohol's effect on the brain may stem from ethanol's ability to lubricate on the molecular level, U.S. researchers suggest.

Using X-ray crystallography, the researchers found a specific nook contained within a channel protein of the brain where ethanol -- the cause of alcohol's inebriating effects -- may bind and act to alter brain cells' communication.

This ion channel plays a key role in several brain functions associated with drugs of abuse and seizures, and the researchers say the results of their study, published in Nature Neuroscience, could lead to the development of new treatments not only for alcoholism but drug addiction and epilepsy.

The ethanol trigger site may also create "short circuits" by opening the brain's ion channels -- called GIRK. Potassium ions leak out of the neuron and decrease brain neuron activity.

"Alcohol may accomplish this by lubricating the activation gears of the channel," study leader Paul Slesinger of the Peptide Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., said in a statement.

"One of several views held that ethanol works by interacting directly with ion channel proteins, but there were no studies that visualized the site of association."

Copyright 2009 by United Press International

This news arrived on: 06/29/2009

Share this Story