US researchers have discovered a gene variation that has the potential to protect against alcoholism, and which could lead to a preventative treatment.
The gene variant known as CYP2EI is linked to people’s response to alcohol, and for 10 percent to 20 percent of people who have it, just a few glasses leads them to feeling more drunk than the rest of the population, University of North Carolina researchers said on Tuesday.
Studies have shown that people with strong reactions to alcohol are “less likely to become alcoholics later in life, but the genetic basis of this finding was not clear,” researchers said in the study published online on Tuesday in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
To distinguish the genetic characteristics of alcoholism, lead study author Kirk Wilhelmsen and his team gathered pairs of college-age siblings with at least one parent who was an alcoholic.
The study participants were given an alcohol/soda cocktail and were questioned on how they felt out of the options: I feel drunk, I don’t feel drunk; I feel sleepy, I don’t feel sleepy.
Researchers used “genetic analyses called linkage and association to hone in on the gene region that appeared to influence how the students perceived alcohol,” the study said.
This CYP2EI gene has long been known to hold an enzyme for metabolizing alcohol and generates free radical molecules.
“It turns out that a specific version ... of CYP2E1 makes people more sensitive to alcohol, and we are now exploring whether it is because it generates more of these free radicals,” Wilhelmsen said.
“This finding is interesting because it hints at a totally new mechanism of how we perceive alcohol when we drink,” he said, adding that the conventional idea for “getting drunk” holds that alcohol affects how neurotransmitters — the molecules communicating between brain neurons — work.
Drugs inducing the CYP2E1 gene could make people more sensitive to alcohol or help sober them up, Wilhelmsen said.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese