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Loss of Cholinergic Muscarinic Receptors in the Frontal Cortex of Alcohol Abusers
Author(s) -
Freund Gerhard,
Ballinger William E.
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
alcoholism: clinical and experimental research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.267
H-Index - 153
eISSN - 1530-0277
pISSN - 0145-6008
DOI - 10.1111/j.1530-0277.1988.tb00255.x
Subject(s) - muscarinic acetylcholine receptor , frontal cortex , cholinergic , muscarinic acetylcholine receptor m4 , neuroscience , muscarinic acetylcholine receptor m1 , receptor , muscarinic acetylcholine receptor m2 , psychology , cortex (anatomy) , muscarinic acetylcholine receptor m3 , medicine , pharmacology
Alcohol abuse causes impairment of cognitive function ranging from mild forms to end‐stage dementia. Alcohol‐related dementia accounts for nearly 20% of all admissions to state mental hospitals and may result from head trauma, thiamine deficiency, Alzheimer's, and other brain diseases that can be diagnosed conclusively only at autopsy. However, we postulate that after all these conditions have been excluded, an “alcohol encephalopathy” remains. This is characterized by impaired synaptic function, which underlies the continuum of impaired intellectual function. We found in 79 histologically normal brains of a nondemented general hospital population a 40% decrease in the density of cholinergic muscarinic receptors in the frontal cortex of alcoholics when compared with matched controls of the same age. Only alcohol abuse and not aging, postmortem changes, medications, clinical (including liver) diseases, or differences in causes of death could account for this loss.