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Alzheimer's, Dementia & Mental Health
Moderate Drinking May Boost Memory and Protect
Against Alzheimer's
Research grows saying
what we eat, drink impacts dementia
 November 2, 2006 - In the long run, a drink or two
a day may be good for the brain, according to researchers who have found
moderate drinking – a couple of alcoholic drinks a day for humans –
improved the memories of laboratory rats and say the discovery could
have implications for Alzheimer's. The implications from this and other
recent studies (see sidebar) is that drinking juice before dinner, then
eating lots of leafy vegetables, with curry flavored fish and a couple
of glasses of wine will offer considerable protection from Alzheimer's.
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Alzheimer's, Dementia & Mental Health |
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Matthew During, this study’s senior author and a
professor of molecular virology, immunology and cancer genetics at Ohio
State University, said “There is some evidence suggesting that mild to
moderate alcohol consumption can protect against diseases like
Alzheimer’s in humans. But it’s not apparent how this happens.”
He and his colleague, Margaret Kalev-Zylinska, a
postdoctoral researcher at the University of Auckland, in New Zealand,
uncovered a neuronal mechanism that may help explain the link between
alcohol and improved memory.
“We saw a noticeable change on the surface of
certain neurons in rats that were given alcohol,” During said. “This
change may have something to do with the positive effects of alcohol on
memory.”
The researchers presented their findings at the
annual Society for Neuroscience conference in Atlanta.
During and Kalev-Zylinska designed a special liquid
diet for the rats. One formulation included a low dose of alcohol,
comparable to two or three drinks a day for a human, while the other
diet included a much higher dose of alcohol, comparable to six or seven
drinks a day for a human. A third group of rats was given a liquid diet
without alcohol. All animals were given their respective diets daily for
about four weeks.
The researchers measured the rats’ blood-alcohol
levels three times throughout the study. Toward the end of the study,
they subjected the rats to two different memory tasks.
For the first task, the rats were given several
minutes to examine two identical, square plastic objects. After a
certain amount of time, a researcher replaced one of the objects with a
new, round object made of glass. The researchers measured the amount of
time that each rat spent checking out the new object – an indication
that the animal recognizes it as a new object.
Rats given low doses of alcohol spent about three
times longer examining the new object than did rats on the alcohol-free
diet. Rats given the high dose of alcohol spent equivalent amounts of
time checking out both objects, suggesting that they were unable to
differentiate the old object from the new one.
For the second task rats were placed in a box with
two chambers separated by a door. One chamber was well-lit, while the
adjacent chamber was dark. After placing a rat in the well-lit chamber
and then lifting the door, the researchers timed how quickly the rats
entered the dark chamber (rats are nocturnal, and naturally prefer dark
spaces.) Once inside the dark chamber, the rat received a mild electric
shock to its feet.
The researchers repeated this same experiment 24
hours later, and kept track of how long it took the animal to enter the
dark chamber. Many of the animals re-entered the dark area, yet the rats
given alcohol waited anywhere from 2.5 to 4.5 times longer to enter the
dark chamber than did the animals given the alcohol-free diet.
“The results suggest that both doses of alcohol
moderately improved the animals’ ability to remember this negative
event, since they seemed hesitant to go into the dark area,” During
said. “It also suggests that high levels of alcohol can reinforce bad
memories.
“People who drink to forget bad memories may
actually be doing the opposite by reinforcing the neural circuits that
control negative emotional memory,” he continued.
At the end of the study, the researchers analyzed
brain and liver tissue from each animal.
They found that low levels of alcohol increased the
expression of a particular receptor, NR1, on the surface of neurons in a
region of the brain, the hippocampus, that plays a role in memory.
Researchers think that NR1 plays a role in memory and learning.
In a separate set of experiments, During and
Kalev-Zylinska increased the number of NR1 receptors in another group of
rats, and found that this boost improved the animals’ memories to an
extent similar to the improvement seen in the rats given low doses of
alcohol. They also they used a new gene transfer technique to knock down
the NR1 receptors in a group of rats given alcohol – alcohol had no
memory-enhancing effects on these animals.
“These experiments suggest that the effect of
alcohol works through the NR1 receptor, at least where memory and
learning are concerned,” During said.
“We didn’t see any toxic effects of low-level
alcohol consumption on the brain or the liver,” During said. “It didn’t
damage neurons nor did it cause liver damage during the short study. But
the higher dose of alcohol damaged both.”
The finding may have implications for serious
neurodegenerative diseases.
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