Good news for Christmas party season: A new compound has been shown to reduce the harmful side-effects of ‘binge drinking’. It also has the potential for new ways to treat Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases that damage the brain but showing that would take $1 billion in clinical trials and 10 years of approval and then some generic company would just poach it a few years later anyway. If they simply go the alternative medicine route, the inventors could save themselves the double-blind clinical trials and get right to selling it.

The compound is named ethane-beta-sultam and it is a taurine ‘pro-drug’ – an effective form of medication that easily enters the blood stream before it is processed by the body into its active form. It is difficult for drugs to get into the brain because of the ‘blood-brain barrier’, the natural defense mechanism that protects the brain. 

The researchers have discovered that when ethane-beta-sultam is administered to rats on a ‘binge drinking’ regime, it reduces the brain cell loss and inflammation that normally result from bouts of heavy binge drinking, leading to symptoms such as decreased memory. These effects can cause long-term damage, particularly to teenagers, whose brains are still in the process of development. It has been shown how brain functions are impaired by alcohol and this is accompanied by inflammation and loss of cells in the brain. However, the effects were reduced or returned to normal in the rats that also received ethane-beta-sultam. 

“One of things that alcohol does is to destroy some of the brain cells which are important for navigation and orientation,” says Professor Mike Page of the University of Huddersfield. “But a combination of alcohol and our compound could overcome this damage.” 

The brain protects itself using ‘glial cells’, which are increased when exposed to alcohol in a binge-drinking regime. “But a combination of our ethane-beta-sultam given at the same time as the alcohol decreased these levels of glial cells.” 

The project continues and could include research to find a compound that performed even better than ethane-beta-sultam. In the longer term, there is a possibility that such compounds could help with the treatment of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and dementia which also result from a loss of brain activity. Many issues surround the prospect of a drug that masks the effects of binge drinking. “But if you accept that alcohol abuse is going to continue, then it might be sensible for society to try and treat it in some way,” says Page.

Citation: Ward, Roberta J. and Hemming, Karl (2014) Ethane-beta-Sultam Modifies the Activation of the Innate Immune System Induced by Intermittent Ethanol Administration in Female Adolescent Rats. Alcoholoism and Drug Dependence, 2 (2). p. 150. ISSN 2329-6488  DOI: 10.4172/2329-6488.1000150

Repository version: http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/22148/