An antidote that neutralizes alcohol and its toxic decay products will save you from a hangover - and has already proven its effectiveness in experiments on rodents.
Despite tens of thousands of years of drinking alcohol, humanity still cannot cope with a banal hangover. According to Yunfeng Lu, professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, up to ten percent of emergency room visits in the United States are associated with acute alcohol poisoning, and it remains a serious risk factor for death from many diseases, including heart disease. vascular diseases and liver damage.
In fact, from the point of view of physiology, the body only fights poisoning. Ethanol is a poison, and it is in the liver that the main steps of its metabolism and neutralization are realized: transformation into even more toxic acetaldehyde, and then into harmless acetic acid. However, with an excess of alcohol, the second, slower stage does not keep up with the first, and acetaldehyde accumulates in the body. This consumes a large amount of energy, which is withdrawn from other consumers. All this, coupled with dehydration, leads to a very severe and even dangerous hangover.
Liver cells (hepatocytes) convert alcohol to acetaldehyde using the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, and acetaldehyde to vinegar - acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. In addition, the enzyme catalase neutralizes hazardous hydrogen peroxide molecules produced during reactions. Yunfeng Lu and his colleagues tried to combine three proteins into a single "hangover pill" - or "antidote to alcohol intoxication," as scientists themselves call it in an article published in the journal Advanced Materials.
All three enzymes have been well studied for a long time, technologies for their production have been worked out, so that the main problem in creating such a drug is its accurate and safe delivery to liver cells. To do this, the proteins were packaged in biocompatible nanocapsules, which ensure their work in the right place. The prototype was tested on laboratory mice - and after four hours the level of alcohol in their blood was 45 percent lower than in the control group of rodents who received only alcohol, but not the "antidote".
Moreover, the content of acetaldehyde in these animals did not increase, remaining at an extremely low level. The difference was also noticeable with the naked eye: after the injection of nanocapsules, drunken mice (which, like humans, eventually tend to fall into a deep sleep) woke up earlier and looked more cheerful than the control group. According to Yunfen Lu, scientists are going to start human trials within a year.
Sergey Vasiliev
