Alcoholism
A gel is intended to prevent physical damage caused by alcohol. A breakthrough?
Enjoyment without consequences? With the help of a new active ingredient, the serious side effects of alcohol consumption can be alleviated.
© IMAGO / Panthermedia
It would be too nice: drinking alcohol in large quantities without suffering consequences such as liver cirrhosis or brain damage. A new type of gel raises hopes.
Raffaele Mezzenga’s email account has been overflowing for two days. They are desperate cries for help from people with whom the polymer physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich normally has nothing to do: alcoholics. “I would beg to have a product that would metabolize half the alcohol I consume, thereby reducing its slowly killing effects,” someone wrote, for example. For a phone call with him star the stressed researcher has no time, only for a quick email exchange. He writes that his working day lasts until 10 p.m.
The study, which is just beginning to cause a stir, was published by Mezzenga with researchers from Switzerland and China in the high-ranking scientific journal nature nanotechnology. The team has developed a gel that could be taken like cough syrup and could reduce the harmful but also intoxicating effects of alcohol. It would actually be a breakthrough if something like this worked. But the big caveat right away: So far this has only worked with mice.
Gel prevents formation of acetaldehyde
Nevertheless, the results of the study are impressive. Apparently the gel is able to prevent the intermediate product acetaldehyde from being produced when alcohol is processed in the liver; this intermediate stage is skipped when alcohol is converted into acetic acid. The toxic acetaldehyde is responsible for some serious physical side effects of alcohol consumption: it plays an essential role in the development of liver cirrhosis, which can later develop into liver cancer, and the poison can also damage nerves and the brain.
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For their experiments, the researchers exposed mice to such high doses of alcohol that they fell into a coma-like sleep. However, if they had previously received the gel, they woke up two hours earlier than their intoxicated counterparts. After six hours, the animals were placed in a round pool filled with water and were able to swim just as quickly as mice that had not previously been given alcohol, from which the researchers concluded that they had returned to a normal level of activity.
The alcohol level in their blood fell significantly faster than in their drunken counterparts who had not received any gel. In alcoholics, certain laboratory values that indicate liver damage are increased – in the mice treated with gel these values were lower than in the comparison group, so their livers seemed to tolerate alcohol poisoning better.
Questionable as a remedy for alcoholism
The researchers would be breaking new ground with the active ingredient. There is currently no active ingredient against the toxic effects of alcohol and its metabolic products. Many possible uses would be conceivable: Patients with acute alcohol poisoning could be treated in this way in emergency rooms – who knows, perhaps they could then be allowed to sleep off their intoxication there instead of being placed in expensive hospital beds. It could also be used in the lifestyle sector – you could swallow a gel like this in advance if you can’t avoid two or three glasses of wine at a party but still want to go home later.
It is questionable, however, whether chronic alcoholics like the desperate man who wrote a begging email to Mezzenga would really benefit. If he is, like many alcoholics, a so-called level drinker, he would probably simply drink more in order to have the usual level of alcohol in his blood that his brain demands.
Further steps unclear
Mezzenga left the question of what happens next unanswered. One thing is clear: Before an active ingredient would be on the market, studies would first have to be carried out on humans in order to clarify questions about the necessary dose, tolerability and side effects. This will take many years.
Who would finance this expensive research can currently only be speculated. In any case, there seems to have been a strong interest in active ingredients against severe side effects of alcohol consumption in China for a long time, as some literature references in the current study point out.
Until now, researchers there had been working on herbal preparations from traditional Chinese medicine, with limited success. The increased interest of the Chinese is not at all surprising: Like Koreans and Japanese, they have difficulty tolerating alcohol because their livers produce fewer enzymes that can quickly break down alcohol and its toxic metabolite, aldehyde.