Alcohol: More than a social lubricant

LA JOLLA, Calif., June 29 (UPI) -- Alcohol's effect on the brain may stem from ethanol's ability to lubricate on the molecular level, U.S. researchers suggest.

Using X-ray crystallography, the researchers found a specific nook contained within a channel protein of the brain where ethanol -- the cause of alcohol's inebriating effects -- may bind and act to alter brain cells' communication.

This ion channel plays a key role in several brain functions associated with drugs of abuse and seizures, and the researchers say the results of their study, published in Nature Neuroscience, could lead to the development of new treatments not only for alcoholism but drug addiction and epilepsy.

The ethanol trigger site may also create "short circuits" by opening the brain's ion channels -- called GIRK. Potassium ions leak out of the neuron and decrease brain neuron activity.

"Alcohol may accomplish this by lubricating the activation gears of the channel," study leader Paul Slesinger of the Peptide Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., said in a statement.

"One of several views held that ethanol works by interacting directly with ion channel proteins, but there were no studies that visualized the site of association."