"Criss is my witneth, ossifer; I sthwear to ya, only had two beersh."
Posted on 08/10/2005 10:55:59 AM PDT by LibWhacker
A gene that helps fruit flies develop alcohol tolerance has been found – and named “hangover”. The gene also controls the flies’ response to stress, and the researchers say that a similar pathway linking alcohol tolerance and stress probably functions in humans.
The findings may explain why people who have been in a stressful situation often have a blunted response to alcohol and may drink more to feel inebriated, experts say, putting them at greater risk of becoming addicted.
Ulrike Heberlein at the University of California at San Francisco, US, and Henrike Scholz from the University of Würzburg in Germany, exposed fruit flies to ethanol vapour. Intoxicated fruit flies show similar behaviour to tipsy humans: they lack coordination and postural control and then fall asleep. It took the flies an average of 20 minutes to recover following their exposure.
After four hours on the wagon, the same Drosophila were again exposed to alcohol. By now, they had developed a tolerance to alcohol and so needed more to reach the same drunkenness, and took longer to “dry out” - 28 minutes.
But flies with a defective form of the hangover gene still took 20 minutes to recover from inebriation time after time - never building up a tolerance.
Stressed out
The researchers then investigated how the gene was involved in stress responses since, in humans at least, the alcohol and stress responses appear to be linked.
A stress response was triggered in a new batch of fruit flies with working hangover genes by heating them to 37°C for 30 minutes. Four hours later, the flies were exposed to alcohol and despite this being their first alcoholic experience, they showed a high tolerance – taking an average of 29.5 minutes to sober up.
But the same increased alcohol tolerance was not seen when flies with the defective gene were exposed to alcohol. “There is growing recognition that stress, at both cellular and systemic levels, contributes to drug- and addiction-related behaviours in mammals. Our studies suggest that this role may be conserved across evolution,” Heberlein and Scholz suggest.
The findings help to define the role that stress has in addiction, says Leslie Morrow, at the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, University of North Carolina, US. “Prior stress can induce tolerance to alcohol even if a person has never had a drink before. And that increased tolerance means that a person can drink more and more before becoming inebriated, making it more likely that they will end up with an addiction problem.”
There may be people in the population who have an over-expression of the human equivalent of the hangover gene and who may especially at risk from developing addiction problems, Morrow adds.
hence the name...bar-fly ?
Are you drinking right now, at this very moment? I know I am! :-)
you all are way to quick for me....
Often called "driving the great white bus." :-)
No disrespect intended, but where did your doctor friend get his information? Cirrhosis is debilitating, deadly, and it's killed more alcoholics than "something else". I doubt most members of AA would support a "difficult to kill your liver" position.
"Criss is my witneth, ossifer; I sthwear to ya, only had two beersh."
LOL - that's funny!
You know you're hungover when...
10. Your natural response to "Good morning," is "Shut the f*** up!!!!""
That's my normal morning demeanor..........and I haven't had a hangover in years :)
Doing the technicolor yawn :)
He may be referring to "self induced diabites", or accidents caused by alcoholism.
However, I know alot of doctors who would argue (with a serious vengence) that steady, and consistant heavy drinking will destroy the liver quite effectily.
Mixing it with drugs, will obviously do more then speed up the process.
That said, destroying your liver is not that hard, and you do not have to drink all day. Just indulge heavily every night.
My frat use to call it "praying to the porcelin gods", or "kneeling before the porcelin lord".
The running phrase for girls was "On their knees before the almight John".
Thank you! :-)
Praying at the ground
Hugging the porcelain
Most heavy drinkers die from other causes. Heart disease, accidents, diabetes, etc. They don't give their liver time to die.
Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.-- Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim.
Perhaps.
Do I need some over-bloated research project to tell me that some guys can't hold their liquor?
No, but then that's not all that this study determined.
Pinpointing the actual gene (or at least one of the genes) which causes the differences between alcoholics and non-alcoholics is a huge step towards understanding the exact biochemistry of alcohol abuse/addiction, and ultimately being able to devise effective treatments for it, anti-hangover pills, and all sorts of other related lines of research.
driving the porcelain bus
talking to Ralph on the big white telephone
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