Kudzu extract curbs alcohol intake

The isoflavone puerarin, extracted from kudzu, the invasive Chinese vine that runs rampant in several parts of the United States, was found to slow the rate of alcohol consumption in a small pilot study and may be useful to deter binge drinking.

The study, led by David M. Penetar, PhD, from McClean Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, was published online May 9 in Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

"We started looking at kudzu in our laboratory 15 years ago," Dr. Penetar told Medscape Medical News. Study coauthor David Y.-W. Lee, PhD, from the Department of Bio-Organic and Natural Products Laboratory at McLean Hospital, in Belmont, Massachusetts, has a lot of experience with Chinese medicine. "He knew that extracts of the kudzu root have been used to treat alcohol-related problems for years," he said.

With animal studies showing that these extracts reduced alcohol consumption, the next step was to see whether this would work in humans, Dr. Penetar said.

The study included 10 healthy adult volunteers (average age, 25.8 years, ±3.2 years) who drank an average of 17.6 drinks (±9.7) per week. None of the study participants had an alcohol abuse problem, Dr. Penetar noted.

"They were all students or working, young adults, and we screened very carefully so that we did not include people in the study who did have drinking problems," he said.

Acting as their own controls, the participants took puerarin, 1200 mg daily, in a double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover design for 1 week before an afternoon drinking session.

The drinking sessions were conducted in a "natural setting" that was furnished like a small apartment living room with an overstuffed recliner, bookshelves, pictures, carpeting, lamps, a TV, a DVD player, and stereo equipment. It also had a small kitchen area with a sink and a small refrigerator where beer, juice, and water were kept.

The volunteers came individually to the apartment-laboratory on 4 separate occasions for a drinking session. They had to abstain from drinking alcohol from 11:00 pm the night before and were not allowed to consume caffeinated drinks after 9:00 am on the day of the drinking session.

The drinking sessions began at 4:30 pm and lasted 1.5 hours. The volunteers had access to up to 6 bottles of their preferred brand of beer, in addition to juice and water.

"This was a simulation of a binge drinking episode, where you drink a lot of drinks at the beginning," Dr. Penetar said.

The researchers also recorded the time spent drinking, the sip volumes, and the total amount of alcohol that was consumed.

When the volunteers took the kudzu extract, they drank significantly less. On average, they consumed 3.5 (±0.55) beers when treated with placebo, and 2.4 (±0.41) beers when treated with puerarin.

After taking placebo, 3 volunteers drank 5 beers, and 1 drank all 6 beers. In contrast, after taking puerarin, none of the volunteers drank 5 or 6 beers. Also, after taking puerarin, the volunteers decreased sip size, took more sips to finish a beer, and took longer to drink each beer. They also took longer to open the next beer when on puerarin.

"They didn't stop completely, but they did reduce how much they drank. We think this compound may help people who binge drink to cut back on how much they consume," Dr. Penetar said.

The extract did not have any adverse effects and did not make anyone sick, he added.

Promising Study
Joanne Fertig, PhD, of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) in Rockville, Maryland, which funded the study, told Medscape Medical News that the study was promising, but small.

The human laboratory model, in which volunteers drank in a natural, living room–type setting, is an interesting one, she said.

"This is a good example of a human laboratory study, in which people are brought into comfortable settings where researchers can measure how much of the drink is being taken with each sip, and also whether people are drinking more slowly under one condition as opposed to another. It is an interesting model to study drinking behavior," Dr. Fertig said.

The caveats are that the study results are very preliminary and that the population in the study were not alcohol dependent, she said.

"So, the bottom line is it's interesting, it's preliminary, it's small, and we are going to continue funding it," Dr. Fertig said.


Source: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/764263?sssdmh=dm1.787408&src=nldne

Strawberries may protect stomach from alcohol damage

European researchers in an experimental animal study confirmed that strawberries have a protecting effect in stomachs that have been damaged by alcohol.

The study was published in the journal Plos One.

Researchers gave drinking alcohol (ethanol) to lab rats and found those that have previously eaten strawberry extract suffered less stomach damage.

Dr. Sara Tulipani, a University of Barcelona researcher and co-author of the study found that strawberries could slow down the formation of stomach ulcers in humans.

"The positive effects of strawberries are not only linked to their antioxidant capacity and high content of phenolic compounds (anthocyans) but also to the fact that they activate the antioxidant defenses and enzymes of the body,” she said.

Researchers found less ulcers and stomach mucus membrane damage in rats that ate strawberry extract of 40 milliliters (ml)/day per kilogram of weight, for 10 days before given alcohol.

Alcohol can cause harmful health effects in the stomach lining. These can include gastritis, an inflammation of the lining which causes swelling and raw areas that can bleed. Another effect can be gastric ulcers, which occur when the lining becomes weak and develops holes.

"This study was not conceived as a way of mitigating the effects of getting drunk but rather as a way of discovering molecules in the stomach membrane that protect against the damaging effects of differing agents,” said Maurizio Battino, coordinator of the research group at the Marche Polytechnic University (UNIVPM, Italy)

Researchers of the study stated that a diet rich in strawberries can have a beneficial effect; the fruit could slow down the formation of stomach ulcers in humans and a compound found within strawberries could be the answer.


Source: http://www.medicaldaily.com/news/20111026/7625/strawberries-protect-stomach-alcohol-sara-tulipani-stomach-ulcers-gastritis-anitoxidents.htm

A little alcohol may stave off Alzheimer's

Teetotallers beware. 

A new study published in the August issue of Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment says that a daily cocktail or glass of wine may help delay dementia. 

A meta-analysis of 143 studies on the effects of alcohol on the brain showed that moderate drinking (no more than 2 drinks a day for a man and 1 drink a day for a woman), reduced the risk for Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia by 23%.

"It doesn't seem to matter if it's beer, wine, or spirits, as long as the drinking was moderate," said Edward J. Neafsey, PhD, from the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Therapeutics at Loyola University Medical Center, Maywood, Illinois.

Dr. Neafsey and coauthor Michael A. Collins, PhD, became interested in whether alcohol might be protective of human brains after experiments showed that rat brains exposed to low doses of alcohol for a few days became resilient when subsequently treated with a toxin.

"If the rat brain slices were treated for 5 or 6 days with low alcohol and then the toxin was administered, there was hardly any damage, whereas if they didn't get the pretreatment with alcohol, there was significant damage," Dr. Neafsey explained.

One theory that Dr. Neafsey and Dr. Collins are working on now holds that alcohol acts as a mild stressor for brain cells and "preconditions" them, making them better able to ward off stress.

"Alcohol does not kill the brain cells, but it's a slight stress. When the cells are exposed they increase levels of various protective compounds, so...they are prepared when something more stressful that might kill or damage them comes along. The theory is called 'preconditioning,' where a mild stress given a few days before a severe stress causes a significant protection," Dr. Neafsey explained.

Heavy Drinking a Different Story

Light to moderate drinking conferred a similar benefit, but heavy drinking (more than 3 to 5 drinks/day) was associated with a higher risk for dementia and cognitive impairment.

In fact, adults who go on occasional binges face a higher risk. A Finnish study showed that adults who binged in midlife at least once a month – drinking, for example, more than five bottles of beer or a bottle of wine at one sitting – were three times more likely to develop dementia, including Alzheimer's, 25 years later.

Most of the studies did not distinguish between the different types of alcohol, but in a few studies, wine appeared to be more beneficial than beer or spirits. "It really seemed to be that alcohol per se was protective, not the type, because the few studies that did make the distinction reported no difference among the effects of the different types of alcohol," Dr. Neafsey said.

Source: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/748617?sssdmh=dm1.713439&src=nldne