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Pathophysiology of alcoholic brain damage: synergistic effects of ethanol, thiamine deficiency and alcoholic liver disease

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Abstract

Chronic alcoholism results in brain damage and dysfunction leading to a constellation of neuropsychiatric symptoms including cognitive dysfunction, the Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome, alcoholic cerebellar degeneration and alcoholic dementia. That these clinically-defined entities result from independent pathophysiologic mechanisms is unlikely. Alcohol and its metabolite acetaldehyde are directly neurotoxic. Alcoholics are thiamine deficient as a result of poor diet, gatrointestinal disorders and liver disease. In addition, both alcohol and acetaldehyde have direct toxic effects on thiamine-related enzymes in liver and brain. Alcoholics frequently develope severe liver disease and liver diseaseper se results in altered thiamine homeostasis, in cognitive dysfunction and in neuropathologic damage to astrocytes. The latter may result in the loss of neuron-astrocytic trafficking of neuroactive amino acids and thiamine esters, essential to CNS function. The present review article proposes mechanisms whereby the effects of alcohol, thiamine deficiency and liver disease combine synergistically to contribute to the phenomena of cognitive dysfunction and “alcoholic brain damage”.

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  1. Neuroscience Research Unit, Hôpital Saint-Luc (University of Montreal), 1058 St-Denis Street, H2X 3J4, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Roger F. Butterworth

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Butterworth, R.F. Pathophysiology of alcoholic brain damage: synergistic effects of ethanol, thiamine deficiency and alcoholic liver disease. Metab Brain Dis 10, 1–8 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01991777

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01991777

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