There's a new line of attack in the war on alcoholism: Reporting in the journal Science, UT Austin researchers discovered that people suffering from alcoholism have less of a protein, GAT-3, in the part of the brain called the amygdala.
This finding, similar to one made with a rat model of alcoholism developed by their Swedish co-authors, makes this protein a promising target for anti-alcoholism drugs. The research was also featured in Scientific American.
"This is one of those relatively rare times where we find an interesting change in our animal models and we find the same change in the brains of human alcoholics," said Dayne Mayfield, a research scientist at UT Austin's Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research and co-author of the new study. "It's a very good indication that our animal model is correct. And if our animal model is correct, we can screen therapeutics with it and have increased confidence in the findings."
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Scientific American: Scientists Pinpoint Brain Region That May Be Center of Alcohol Addiction
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