Sullivan, E. V., & Zahr, N. M. (2008). Commentary on “Increased MCP-1 and Microglia in Various regions of Human Alcoholic Brain”. Experimental neurology, 213(1), 10.
Introduction
A potential mechanism of the neurotoxic effects of chronic excessive alcohol consumption
The study by He and Crews (2008) is a hypothesis-driven work with the objective of isolating a potential mechanism of neural damage caused by extensive, chronic alcohol consumption. To this end, the authors obtained human brain tissue of alcoholics and moderate drinking controls from the New South Wales Tissue Resource Center, which provided a clinical characterization through systematic postmortem “interview” (Harper et al., 2003a, Harper et al., 2003b). Markers of inflammation sought were…
Neuropathological evidence
Neuropathological studies of chronic alcoholism indicate that loss of neurons is selective to frontal cortex (Courville, 1955, Harper and Kril, 1990) with little evidence for widespread cell loss (Harper, 1998, Harper et al., 1987, Kril and Harper, 1989). Although more recent work using TUNEL staining, an indicator of damaged DNA and potentially indicative of apoptosis, reveals TUNEL-positive cells in the superior frontal cortex of human alcoholics, rarely observed in control brains,…
How He and Crews fill a lacuna of evidence for alcoholism neurotoxicity
The hypothesis tested by He and Crews was that alcohol induces inflammatory processes in the brain leading to neurodegeneration. To the extent that He and Crews sought to demonstrate an overly active immune response in the brains of alcoholics compared with controls, they were successful. Greater expression of MCP-1, Iba-1, or GluT5 in several brain regions of alcoholics relative to controls supports the concept that neuroinflammation occurs in response to chronic and excessive alcohol…
Significance of basic research on alcoholism to medicine and society
According to the 2001-2 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC), more than 20% of men, age 18 to 29, met criteria for a diagnosable alcohol use disorder (AUD): 9.3% Alcohol Abuse and 13% Alcohol Dependence. The lower prevalence in women and a declining prevalence with older age reduce the population-wide mean prevalence of an AUD in the past year to less than 10% (Grant et al., 2004). The socioeconomic, health, and mortality costs of alcohol use in the US,…