A new study shows that some people are more likely to become alcoholics than others. This discovery puts into perspective the lack of willpower, often attributed to people suffering from alcohol dependence, or the prevalence of age and social background in this kind of addiction.
A new Swedish study, published in the journal Science, shows that the amygdala could explain why some people (on average 15% of the general population, Editor’s note) would be more likely to become alcoholics than others. These people would produce the inhibitory neurotransmitter GAT3 too weakly, and would therefore be more sensitive to the addictive effects of alcohol.
15% of alcohol dependent rats
To achieve these results, the researchers carried out tests on rats, known to have metabolisms very similar to those of humans. The animals were given the choice between consuming sugary water or drinking alcohol. After a while, the subjects mostly preferred sugar water to alcohol, except 15% of them. The latter persisted in their choice, even when the scientists gave them an electric shock to their paw whenever they preferred alcohol to sugar water.
“One of the fundamental characteristics of addiction is that you know it is going to harm you, if not kill you, and yet you keep doing it,” says Markus Heilig, director of the Center for Social and Affective Neuroscience. Once it was established that 15% of the rats were addicted to alcohol, the researchers studied their brains. As a result, the GAT-3 protein gene was expressed at much lower levels in all of their tonsils. The team then transposed this discovery to deceased humans. In people with documented alcohol dependence, GAT-3 levels in the amygdala region were again lower than in nonalcoholic subjects.
Global patient care
This discovery could help improve the treatment of alcohol dependence, even if, as Pr Amine Benyamina, president of the French addictology federation, reminds us: “the only means currently available to effectively combat alcoholism, it is a comprehensive care of the patient, that is to say a work of psychology, psychotherapy, a development of the social environment and the taking of drugs which have the authorization of marketing (AMM ) “. The study also relativizes the lack of will, often attributed to people suffering from alcohol dependence, or the prevalence of age or social background in this kind of addiction.
If scientific studies on their subject contradict each other, many drug treatments for alcoholism are currently emerging, with the aim of offering alternatives to abstinence. Nalmefene (Selincro®) acts on the reward system (studied above in rats) by reducing the urge to drink, while baclofen (Liorésal®, Baclofen Zentiva®) and sodium oxybate (Xyrem ®) act on the release of dopamine.
In France, excess alcohol continues to kill in large quantities, despite a drop in consumption over the past 50 years, with 49,000 deaths each year. Alcohol is responsible for 36,500 deaths in men, which represents 13% of total male mortality, and 12,500 deaths in women, or 5% of total mortality. Excessive consumption leads to hepatic, cardiovascular, neurological and cancer complications.
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