Chronic Alcoholism-mediated Metabolic Violations in Albino Rats Brain

Aims: Despite of intensive investigation of alcoholism consequences for nervous system, the full complex of such metabolic alterations in brain remains unknown. The aim of present work was to study the influence of chronic ethanol consumption on rats’ brain contents of free amino acids, rates of CYP2E1 and CYP3A2 expression, NO-synthase activities and pro- and antioxidant system parameters.

Study Design: Wistar albino male rats (body weight (bw), 160–200 g) were divided into two groups: I – alcohol, II – normal animals.

Methodology: The content of amino acids in rat brain was determined using an amino acid analyzer. Brain CYP2E1 and CYP3A2 were evaluated with RT-PCR method, pro- and antioxidant system parameters – by standard methods.

Results: Changes of brain free amino acids contents with alcoholism were demonstrated for 14 amino acids and their total sum. Chronic alcohol consumption caused 1.77 times increasing of CYP2Е1 mRNA expression in rat’s brain, 2.34 times – of CYP3A2 mRNA expression, 2.8 times - of cNOS activity, 42% - of TBARS formation rates. Activities of SOD and catalase were decreased 19% and 25% respectively.

Conclusions: Thus investigation of alcoholism effects on brain levels of free amino acids permits to obtain complex estimation of this pathology influence on metabolic processes in brain, especially on amino acids, proteins, ATP and NADPH metabolisms. Alterations on the level of genome in our experiments were accompanied with complex alterations on the level of protein, amino acid and nitrous metabolisms.