We all know that too much alcohol is bad for us, but do we know what it actually does to our brains? New research suggests that long-term, heavy alcohol consumption kills off brain stem cells, which play a key role in supporting healthy cognitive function.
According to data provided by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), in the United States, approximately
Research has also repeatedly tied alcohol abuse with the risk of developing
And now, researchers are investigating the impact of alcohol on neural stem cells (NSCs), which are undifferentiated cells in the central nervous system that have the ability to specialize as and when needed.
Dr. Ping Wu — from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston — and team performed a series of experiments involving mice. They found that alcohol alters NSC differentiation and affects cell survival. They also noticed a different impact in females compared with males.
“The discovery that the adult brain produces stem cells that create new nerve cells provides a new way of approaching the problem of alcohol-related changes in the brain,” says Dr. Wu.
“However, before the new approaches can be developed, we need to understand how alcohol impacts the brain stem cells at different stages in their growth, in different brain regions, and in the brains of both males and females.”
Dr. Ping Wu
The study’s
To study the fate of NSCs in laboratory mice exposed to long-term alcohol consumption, the team used the latest
They found that, of the
In this region, the stem cells “were most susceptible to the effects of ethanol,” which disrupted their process of differentiation.
However, Dr. Wu and team note that chronic alcohol consumption appeared to kill most NSCs. After long-term exposure, the pool of stem cells had greatly decreased across the board.
Additionally, the researchers found that female mice were more susceptible to the effects of excess alcohol than their male counterparts.
“Ethanol females displayed more severe symptoms of intoxication and escalated in severity at a higher rate than males,” the study authors report.
Not only that, but the number of stem cells was also reduced more drastically in the brains of females compared with those of males.
“Probably the most interesting finding from this work,” the authors say, “is that regional location and sex played pivotal roles in determination of NSC response to ethanol consumption.”
Still, certain underlying mechanisms and reasons behind the greater susceptibility of females to alcohol require further investigation.
“If males and females produce varying levels of
In future studies, the team hopes to reveal more information about the mechanism at play in the interaction between alcohol and NSCs. This would allow them to uncover better strategies for addressing alcohol abuse.