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More than 15 million people worldwide struggle with alcohol use disorder, a chronic relapsing condition that can have severe consequences on a person’s physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing. Despite its prevalence, few effective medications to treat alcohol addiction exist, and the risk of relapse after seeking treatment can be up to 90 percent within four years.
Exposure to alcohol during adolescence can leave a person vulnerable to a lifetime of psychiatric challenges, such as anxiety problems and alcohol-use disorder. Epigenetic modifications arise after adolescent alcohol use, which block the expression of proteins associated with higher-order cognitive and emotional processes during adulthood. CRISPR gene editing can reverse the disruptive epigenetic modification, and alleviate anxiety and alcoholism.
“Early binge drinking can have long-lasting and significant effects on the brain and the results of this study offer evidence that gene editing is a potential antidote to these effects, offering a kind of factory reset for the brain, if you will,” said study senior author Subhash Pandey, the Joseph A. Flaherty Endowed Professor of Psychiatry and director of the Center for Alcohol Research in Epigenetics at UIC. The study is issued by researchers from the University of Illinois Chicago who have been studying the effects of early life binge drinking on health later in life.
"It's common to have aphasias after a stroke because that's one of the most common forms of brain disease, but really any type of brain disease, if it affects the language networks in the brain it can cause aphasia," - Dr. Joseph Cooper, associate professor of clinical psychiatry at UIC.
Dr. Sally Weinstein hosted an educational webinar on “Suicide Risk Prevention in Pediatric Bipolar Disorder: The Role of the Family” for the International Bipolar Foundation (IBPF.org). The webinar is featured on the IBPF.org website and the IBPF YouTube Channel.