Alcohol-Mediated Organ Damages: Heart and Brain.

Front Pharmacol

Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Howard University, Washington, DC, United States.

Published: February 2018

Alcohol is one of the most commonly abused substances in the United States. Chronic consumption of ethanol has been responsible for numerous chronic diseases and conditions globally. The underlying mechanism of liver injury has been studied in depth, however, far fewer studies have examined other organs especially the heart and the central nervous system (CNS). The authors conducted a narrative review on the relationship of alcohol with heart disease and dementia. With that in mind, a complex relationship between inflammation and cardiovascular disease and dementia has been long proposed but inflammatory biomarkers have gained more attention lately. In this review we examine some of the consequences of the altered cytokine regulation that occurs in alcoholics in organs other than the liver. The article reviews the potential role of inflammatory markers such as TNF-α in predicting dementia and/or cardiovascular disease. It was found that TNF-α could promote and accelerate local inflammation and damage through autocrine/paracrine mechanisms. Unraveling the mechanisms linking chronic alcohol consumption with proinflammatory cytokine production and subsequent inflammatory signaling pathways activation in the heart and CNS, is essential to improve our understanding of the disease and hopefully facilitate the development of new remedies.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5816804PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2018.00081DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

disease dementia
8
cardiovascular disease
8
alcohol-mediated organ
4
organ damages
4
heart
4
damages heart
4
heart brain
4
brain alcohol
4
alcohol commonly
4
commonly abused
4

Similar Publications

The present study investigated the neuromodulatory substrates of salience processing and its impact on memory encoding and behaviour, with a specific focus on two distinct types of salience: reward and contextual unexpectedness. 46 Participants performed a novel task paradigm modulating these two aspects independently and allowing for investigating their distinct and interactive effects on memory encoding while undergoing high-resolution fMRI. By using advanced image processing techniques tailored to examine midbrain and brainstem nuclei with high precision, our study additionally aimed to elucidate differential activation patterns in subcortical nuclei in response to reward-associated and contextually unexpected stimuli, including distinct pathways involving in particular dopaminergic modulation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Searching for new drugs to treat Alzheimer's disease dementia through multiple pathways.

World J Clin Cases

January 2025

Department of Neurology, Guizhou Medical University, Guiyang 550004, Guizhou Province, China.

Dementia is a group of diseases, including Alzheimer's disease (AD), vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson's disease dementia, metabolic dementia and toxic dementia. The treatment of dementia mainly includes symptomatic treatment by controlling the primary disease and accompanying symptoms, nutritional support therapy for repairing nerve cells, psychological auxiliary treatment, and treatment that improves cognitive function through drugs. Among them, drug therapy to improve cognitive function is important.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Predicting dementia early has major implications for clinical management and patient outcomes. Yet, we still lack sensitive tools for stratifying patients early, resulting in patients being undiagnosed or wrongly diagnosed. Despite rapid expansion in machine learning models for dementia prediction, limited model interpretability and generalizability impede translation to the clinic.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: While semaglutide, approved for type-2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), is being investigated as a treatment for brain disorders, concerns over adverse neuropsychiatric events have emerged. More data are therefore needed to assess the effects of semaglutide on brain health. This study provides robust estimates of the risk of neurological and psychiatric outcomes following semaglutide use compared to three other antidiabetic medications.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

As a key inflammatory factor, the nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain (NOD)-like receptor protein 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome plays a crucial role in neuroinflammation and the progression of neurodegenerative diseases. Dysregulation of NLRP3 signaling can trigger various inflammatory responses in the brain, contributing to the development of neurodegenerative diseases such as ischemic stroke, vascular dementia (VaD), Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Therefore, the NLRP3 signaling pathway is a promising therapeutic target for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, including VaD.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!