THURSDAY, June 13, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- A molecule that boosts the urge to drink alcohol might hold the key to doing just the opposite.
Neuroscientists at the University of California, San Francisco's Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center have discovered a molecule called a Beta-gamma dimer. It heightens the brain's reaction to alcohol, and that causes a chemical reaction that makes a person want to drink more. Finding a way to keep the brain from receiving this molecule's signals can prevent a person from downing one drink after another, the researchers say in a study that appears in the June 14 issue of the journal Cell.
The studies focused on a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, an area that scientists know is activated by alcohol and other addictive substances.
Alcohol creates a "synergy" between two chemical pathways involving the neurotransmitter -- dopamine and the neuromodulator adenosine. The linking mechanism is the Beta-gamma dimer. It's this combined effect that seems to maintain the urge to drink alcohol, the study says.
Preventing this "synergy" by blocking Beta-gamma dimer molecules may provide a way to treat alcoholism, and it may be possible to develop drugs to do that, the researchers conclude.
The research included studies with rats trained to drink alcohol voluntarily. The rats eventually became used to consuming the human equivalent of about two drinks every two hours.
The researchers then introduced a chemical into the rats' nucleus accumbens that inhibited Beta-gamma dimer activity, and the rats' alcohol consumption decreased.
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