Nurses must also care for global health, and the circular economy can help
4 January 2023
The first need of a newborn is not to eat, it is contact with its mother's skin
4 January 2023
According to the latest survey on drugs in secondary education in Spain (ESTUDES), 3 out of every 4 students between 14 and 18 years old have drunk alcohol during the last month, and 27% have done so quickly and intensively, "by binge drinking." This drinking is the most harmful and can cause long-term, and even irreversible, damage to the adolescent brain.
The good news is that alcohol consumption among young people has shown a slight downward trend in recent years, but the rates are still very high.
A vulnerable brain until early youth
It is useless to talk about the effects of drugs of abuse if it is not related to the age of the person taking them. The brain is developing until the age of 21-24, depending on the individual. Until that moment, said organ is in a situation of greater vulnerability to exposure to any toxic compound.
One of the big problems in this sense is the trivialization of drug consumption, taking only adults into account. If this message penetrates without distinction of age, we face a serious risk to public health.
Take cannabis as an example. Mental health problems associated with marijuana, such as depression, temporary psychosis or schizophrenia, are linked to how old the individual has been when they start using it.
The data accumulated over the last decades demonstrate that the early onset of dementia is related to the age at which alcohol consumption begins. Knowing this and that the brain does not stop developing until at least the age of 21, it is incomprehensible that drinking alcohol is legal after the age of 18 in most of the world.
This is how alcohol affects the adolescent brain
The response of the immune system to the presence of alcohol leads to the activation of inflammatory processes that contribute to brain damage. The neuroinflammation induced by this drug has been related to the neurotoxic and neurodegenerative effects it produces, which are much more marked during adolescence.
It is not surprising that the sooner we start drinking alcoholic beverages, the more likely we are to develop early dementia. The scientific community has been warning about these effects for a long time. In animal models, it is perfectly observed how binge drinking during adolescence promotes the onset of Alzheimer's disease in young adults.
This type of practice attacks the so-called neural progenitors, which are abundant in the adolescent brain. They are like stem cells that are waiting to become neurons and integrate into the neural networks of the brain. This occurs, for example, during aging.
If we reduce the reserves of neuronal progenitors early in life, the defense mechanism against aging is diminished. And the same thing happens in other situations of brain damage: we are left without the capacity to respond. Under these circumstances, it is reasonable to think that neurodegenerative diseases accelerate their appearance.
What can we do
Our group has just discovered a new protein that is essential for the damage that alcohol causes in the adolescent brain. Inhibiting it manages to prevent the decrease in neuronal progenitors that this drug causes in young people.
In addition, the compound that we have designed to act on that protein, called MY10, also regulates the immune response to alcohol. Interestingly, it does this differently in male and female mice. Since MY10 completely prevents the loss of neural progenitors in both sexes, it does not appear that the immune reaction is the only response to alcohol that plays an important role in the harmful effects on the adolescent brain.
Like us, many other groups worldwide work on this type of treatment, with very promising results. For example, the group of American specialist Fulton Crews has observed how the drug galantamine repairs the loss of neuronal progenitors in rats.
In this case, galantamine was only used in male rats and the researchers observed that it limits the immune response induced by alcohol, which limits its neurotoxic effects. This is very interesting because this drug is already used to treat Alzheimer's in humans. Therefore, we know well its doses, adverse effects, etc.
But we must not fool ourselves: pharmacology must be the last tool; It will never be as effective as prevention. This task shouldn't be that complicated. We must start with awareness based on scientific evidence. Fighting family and social passivity with alcohol consumption in adolescents must be a priority. We cannot ignore these gatherings of hundreds or thousands of young people drinking uncontrollably.
Among other measures, experts raise their voices for courageous initiatives to be adopted regarding the exposure of young people to drug content in digital media that does not correspond to their level of development and maturity. Looking the other way is not an option.
Read the article on the original website, clicking on the button below this text
Source: The Conversation. Authorship:
Gonzalo Herradón Gil-Gallardo
Professor of Pharmacology, Dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy, CEU San Pablo University
Featured Image: Source Pexels.com, Photo by Olya Prutskova
