Drunk mice scientists have learned to cure them from a hangover

Many lovers of laying down the collar dream of a magic pill that relieved them of the symptoms of intoxication the next morning. Alas, while scientists have not come up with a reliable remedy for a hangover, there are still some successes in this area. True, so far only … drunk mice have learned to cure the health problems that excess alcohol causes him. The trouble is that, along with a hangover, they were completely deprived of the pleasure of alcohol itself.

The authors of the publication in the publication Microbiology Spectrum shared the results of recent research in this regard.

So, scientists from China conducted studies demonstrating that mice that received a genetically modified probiotic recovered from alcohol exposure and had fewer health effects than mice that did not receive a probiotic.

…It’s no secret that excessive alcohol consumption leads to a painful hangover and accompanying headaches, fatigue and nausea. Well, regular drinking leads to a number of health problems, including heart disease, cirrhosis of the liver and immunodeficiencies.

It is clear that the surest way to avoid such problems is to drink less. However, researchers from China have proposed another way to alleviate hangovers and other adverse effects – a genetically engineered probiotic.

In an article published in the journal Microbiology Spectrum, the researchers described their approach and reported that in mice, such treatment reduced alcohol absorption, prolonged the period of alcohol tolerance (resistance) and reduced the recovery time of animals after alcohol exposure.

The human body primarily uses forms of an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase, or ADH, to metabolize alcohol. But there are other enzymes that are more effective. Some studies have shown that the ADH1B enzyme, found predominantly in East Asians and Polynesians, is 100 times more active than other variants. There have been studies (also in mice) that have shown that viral vectors genetically engineered to express ADH1B can accelerate the breakdown of alcohol, but this approach has not been subsequently found to be safe in humans.

Chinese scientists were looking for a safer way and settled on the probiotic Lactococcus lactis, a bacterium often used in fermentation. Using molecular cloning, they first introduced the gene for the ADH1B enzyme into a bacterial plasmid and then into a strain of Lactococcus lactis. Laboratory tests have confirmed that the resulting genetically modified probiotic releases the enzyme. It remained only to place the resulting therapeutic composition in a capsule to ensure its resistance to the effects of gastric acid, and then test it. The studies involved 3 groups of 5 mice, each of which was exposed to different levels of alcohol.

In untreated mice, signs of intoxication appeared 20 minutes after exposure to alcohol. For example, when mice were placed on their backs, they could not stand up. But in the group that received a probiotic that contained human ADH1B, half of the mice were still able to roll over an hour after alcohol exposure. A quarter never lost the ability to roll over.

Further tests showed that 2 hours after exposure, the control group’s blood alcohol level continued to rise, while it began to decline in the probiotic-treated mice. In addition, the researchers found that liver lipids and triglycerides decreased in the treated mice, suggesting that the probiotic may mitigate alcohol-related damage to this organ.

The new probiotic has not yet been tested in humans, but the authors predict that if it provides the same benefits, it could be a new way to reduce a lot of alcohol-related health problems, as well as liver problems in general.

Meng Dong, Ph.D. from the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who worked on the study, noted that the clinical application could go beyond alcohol-related diseases. “We believe that genetically engineered probiotics will provide new ideas for the treatment of liver diseases,” she said. The next step, Dr. Dong says, will be to explore whether the modified probiotic’s potential therapeutic effect extends to humans.

As the general practitioner, military doctor Alexei Vodovozov explains, in fact, mice were temporarily made fast metabolizers of ethanol, and it’s not really about relieving a hangover – it’s just that alcohol under the influence of a probiotic is more quickly excreted from the body: “The authors of this work found a way to introduce a fast version of alcohol dehydrogenase into the intestines using genes inserted into the bacterium Lactococcus lactis. In other words, genetically modified bacteria were introduced into the intestines of experimental mice, which gobbled up some of the ethanol, quickly turning it into acetaldehyde. That is, they imitated the “Asian” version of ethanol metabolizers, depriving the mice of the euphoric stage of intoxication, and yes, along the way, protecting them from the acute toxic effects of ethanol. Leaving them then face to face with acetaldehyde, which has not gone away. During the experiment, mice were pumped with wine at a rate of 6 mg/g of body weight, since this dose did not kill them, but caused a measurable loss of physical performance within 1 hour. Empirically, we got to a probiotic dose of 1×10 ^ 9 CFU: there was no sense from smaller ones. The mice that drank the probiotic without a snack passed out after 1,200 seconds, while those that were given the probiotic were still able to move after an hour. Drunk mice, as the authors found, take 6 to 10 hours to recover. To accurately record everything, mice were placed in a physical activity recorder 1 hour after drinking. The readings were taken every 15 s. As soon as they were non-zero four times in a row, it was considered that the mouse had sobered up. In the group of six mice that ate a probiotic, the restoration of physical activity was recorded after about 5.5 hours, and in the group that drank without a snack, it was 6.5 hours, which, of course, is statistically significant, there are questions about other aspects of significance. In addition, the authors note that those who drank without a snack were cut off for the entire time, and 25% of those who ate probiotics were active throughout the entire registration process. From which the authors conclude that probiotics with a fast alcohol dehydrogenase gene can reduce the recovery time in mice after an acute alcohol load. Which is generally true, because just less ethanol is absorbed. At the same time, acetic aldehyde was ignored as a class, and, by the way, it is he who causes a hangover. And it is one thing to prevent a high dose of ethanol from entering the body, and quite another to immediately distill part of this high dose into acetaldehyde. Physical activity is, of course, good. But this is not the only indicator, especially for people. Hangovers – like acetaldehyde poisoning – are manifold, and physical activity is sometimes needed stupidly there in order to get to the toilet or refrigerator. If the body has moved, it does not mean that it has coped with the hangover.

It remains to add that we must not forget that there is still a difference between humans and mice: not everything that shows an effect on rodents subsequently turns out to be effective for humans. “In the meantime, we can once again congratulate the mice. And to sympathize with the fact that they were driven into a hangover immediately, bypassing intoxication. And maybe that’s why they began to move faster, ”Vodovozov notes.