Congratulations to School of Medicine undergraduates - Declan Wayne, Henry Gerdes, Laura Johnson, Daniela Schwendener and George Allen - who have been named as co-authors in a paper on alcoholism recently published in Brain Sciences.
Their final-year research projects for the BSc Medical Physiology and Therapeutics and BMedSci programmes contributed to the study entitled, "The Loss of α- and β-Tubulin Proteins Are a Pathological Hallmark of Chronic Alcohol Consumption and Natural Brain Ageing", which investigated damage to the prefrontal cortex of humans as a consequence of alcoholism, and from natural brain ageing.
Interestingly, cytoskeletal tubulin proteins were depleted in brains from alcoholics and also the elderly (over 60 years of age). Furthermore, levels in alcoholic subjects were significantly lower than control subjects of similar age, suggesting that alcoholism may accelerate this normal ageing process.
Publication link: https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci8090175
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