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La Revue Du Praticien Feb 2022
Topics: Alcoholism; Ethanol; Humans; Methanol
PubMed: 35289533
DOI: No ID Found -
Experimental Psychology Nov 2022Somewhat counterintuitively, alcohol consumption following learning of new information has been shown to enhance performance on a delayed subsequent memory test. This...
Somewhat counterintuitively, alcohol consumption following learning of new information has been shown to enhance performance on a delayed subsequent memory test. This phenomenon has become known as the retrograde facilitation effect (Parker et al., 1981). Although conceptually replicated repeatedly, serious methodological problems are associated with most previous demonstrations of retrograde facilitation. Moreover, two potential explanations have been proposed, the interference and the consolidation hypothesis. So far, empirical evidence for and against both hypotheses is inconclusive (Wixted, 2004). To scrutinize the existence of the effect, we conducted a pre-registered replication that avoided common methodological pitfalls. In addition, we used Küpper-Tetzel and Erdfelder's (2012) multinomial processing tree (MPT) model to disentangle encoding, maintenance, and retrieval contributions to memory performance. With a total sample size of = 93, we found no evidence for retrograde facilitation in overall cued or free recall of previously presented word pairs. In line with this, MPT analyses also showed no reliable difference in maintenance probabilities. However, MPT analyses revealed a robust alcohol advantage in retrieval. We conclude that alcohol-induced retrograde facilitation might exist and be driven by an underlying retrieval benefit. Future research is needed to investigate potential moderators and mediators of the effect explicitly.
Topics: Humans; Mental Recall; Cues; Learning; Ethanol; Cognition
PubMed: 36809161
DOI: 10.1027/1618-3169/a000569 -
Journal of Environmental Management Jul 2019Alcohols are the essential chemicals used in a variety of pharmaceutical and chemical industries. The extreme purity of alcohols in many of such industrial applications... (Review)
Review
Alcohols are the essential chemicals used in a variety of pharmaceutical and chemical industries. The extreme purity of alcohols in many of such industrial applications is essential. Though distillation is one of the methods used conventionally to purify alcohols, the method consumes more energy and requires carcinogenic entertainers, making the process environmentally toxic. Alternatively, efforts have been made to focus research efforts on alcohol dehydration by the pervaporation (PV) separation technique using polymeric membranes. The present review is focused on alcohol dehydration using PV separation technique, which is the most efficient and benign method of purifying alcohols that are required in fine chemicals synthesis and developing pharmaceutical formulations. This review will discuss about the latest developments in the area of PV technique used in alcohol dehydration using a variety of novel membranes.
Topics: Dehydration; Distillation; Ethanol; Humans; Membranes, Artificial; Polymers
PubMed: 31063879
DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.04.043 -
Sheng Wu Gong Cheng Xue Bao = Chinese... May 2021Higher alcohols that contain more than two carbon atoms have better fuel properties than ethanol, making them important supplements and alternatives to fossil fuels.... (Review)
Review
Higher alcohols that contain more than two carbon atoms have better fuel properties than ethanol, making them important supplements and alternatives to fossil fuels. Using microbes to produce higher alcohols from renewable biomass can alleviate the current energy and environmental crises, and has become a major future direction for green biomanufacturing. Since natural microbes can only produce a few higher alcohols in small amounts, it is necessary to reconstruct the synthetic pathways for higher alcohols in model industrial strains through metabolic engineering and synthetic biology to overcome the metabolic bottlenecks. A series of milestones have been accomplished in past decades. The authors of this review have witnessed the entire journey of this field from its first success to the leaping development. On the 30th anniversary of the founding of the discipline of metabolic engineering, this review dates back to the great milestones in achieving heterologous production of higher alcohols in non-native strains. The design and optimization of high alcohol biosynthetic pathways, the expansion of feedstock, the engineering of host strains and the industrialization process are summarized. This review aims to draw further attention to microbial synthesis of higher alcohols, inspire the development of novel techniques and strategies of metabolic engineering, and promote the innovation and upgrade of China's biofuel industry.
Topics: Alcohols; Biofuels; Biosynthetic Pathways; Ethanol; Metabolic Engineering; Synthetic Biology
PubMed: 34085451
DOI: 10.13345/j.cjb.200700 -
Annual Review of Physiology Feb 2022At-risk alcohol use is a major contributor to the global health care burden and leads to preventable deaths and diseases including alcohol addiction, alcoholic liver... (Review)
Review
At-risk alcohol use is a major contributor to the global health care burden and leads to preventable deaths and diseases including alcohol addiction, alcoholic liver disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, traumatic injuries, gastrointestinal diseases, cancers, and fetal alcohol syndrome. Excessive and frequent alcohol consumption has increasingly been linked to alcohol-associated tissue injury and pathophysiology, which have significant adverse effects on multiple organ systems. Extensive research in animal and in vitro models has elucidated the salient mechanisms involved in alcohol-induced tissue and organ injury. In some cases, these pathophysiological mechanisms are shared across organ systems. The major alcohol- and alcohol metabolite-mediated mechanisms include oxidative stress, inflammation and immunometabolic dysregulation, gut leak and dysbiosis, cell death, extracellular matrix remodeling, endoplasmic reticulum stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, and epigenomic modifications. These mechanisms are complex and interrelated, and determining the interplay among them will make it possible to identify how they synergistically or additively interact to cause alcohol-mediated multiorgan injury. In this article, we review the current understanding of pathophysiological mechanisms involved in alcohol-induced tissue injury.
Topics: Animals; Ethanol; Humans; Inflammation; Liver Diseases, Alcoholic; Oxidative Stress
PubMed: 35143331
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-physiol-060821-014008 -
Chemical Research in Toxicology Jun 2023Motivations for understanding the underlying mechanisms of alcohol toxicity range from economical to toxicological and clinical. On the one hand, acute alcohol toxicity... (Review)
Review
Motivations for understanding the underlying mechanisms of alcohol toxicity range from economical to toxicological and clinical. On the one hand, acute alcohol toxicity limits biofuel yields, and on the other hand, acute alcohol toxicity provides a vital defense mechanism to prevent the spread of disease. Herein the role that stored curvature elastic energy (SCE) in biological membranes might play in alcohol toxicity is discussed, for both short and long-chain alcohols. Structure-toxicity relationships for alcohols ranging from methanol to hexadecanol are collated, and estimates of alcohol toxicity per alcohol molecule in the cell membrane are made. The latter reveal a minimum toxicity value per molecule around butanol before alcohol toxicity per molecule increases to a maximum around decanol and subsequently decreases again. The impact of alcohol molecules on the lamellar to inverse hexagonal phase transition temperature () is then presented and used as a metric to assess the impact of alcohol molecules on SCE. This approach suggests the nonmonotonic relationship between alcohol toxicity and chain length is consistent with SCE being a target of alcohol toxicity. Finally, evidence for SCE-driven adaptations to alcohol toxicity in the literature are discussed.
Topics: Alcohols; Ethanol; Methanol; Cell Membrane; Temperature
PubMed: 37186813
DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemrestox.3c00039 -
Progress in Neuro-psychopharmacology &... Jan 2021Alcohol is a psychoactive substance highly used worldwide, whose harmful use might cause a broad range of mental and behavioural disorders. Underlying brain impact, the... (Review)
Review
Alcohol is a psychoactive substance highly used worldwide, whose harmful use might cause a broad range of mental and behavioural disorders. Underlying brain impact, the neuroinflammatory response induced by alcohol is recognised as a key contributing factor in the progression of other neuropathological processes, such as neurodegeneration. These sequels are determined by multiple factors, including age of exposure. Strikingly, it seems that the endocannabinoid system modulation could regulate the alcohol-induced neuroinflammation. Although direct CB1 activation can worsen alcohol consequences, targeting other components of the expanded endocannabinoid system may counterbalance the pro-inflammatory response. Indeed, specific modulations of the expanded endocannabinoid system have been proved to exert anti-inflammatory effects, primarily through the CB2 and PPARγ signalling. Among them, some endo- and exogeneous cannabinoids can block certain pro-inflammatory mediators, such as NF-κB, thereby neutralizing the neuroinflammatory intracellular cascades. Furthermore, a number of cannabinoids are able to activate complementary anti-inflammatory pathways, which are necessary for the transition from chronically overactivated microglia to a regenerative microglial phenotype. Thus, cannabinoid modulation provides cooperative anti-inflammatory mechanisms that may be advantageous to resolve a pathological neuroinflammation in an alcohol-dependent context.
Topics: Animals; Brain; Encephalitis; Endocannabinoids; Ethanol; Humans; Signal Transduction
PubMed: 32758518
DOI: 10.1016/j.pnpbp.2020.110054 -
Nutrients Sep 2022The consumption of alcohol is associated with well-known health harms and many governments worldwide are actively engaged in devising approaches to reduce them. To this... (Review)
Review
The consumption of alcohol is associated with well-known health harms and many governments worldwide are actively engaged in devising approaches to reduce them. To this end, a common proposed strategy aims at reducing alcohol consumption. This approach has led to the development of non-alcoholic drinks, which have been especially welcome by younger, wealthier, health-conscious consumers, who have been turning away from alcohol to look toward alternatives. However, a drawback of non-alcoholic drinks is that they do not facilitate social interaction in the way alcohol does, which is the main reason behind social drinking. Therefore, an alternative approach is to develop functional drinks that do not use alcohol yet mimic the positive, pro-social effects of alcohol without the associated harms. This article will discuss (1) current knowledge of how alcohol mediates its effects in the brain, both the desirable, e.g., antistress to facilitate social interactions, and the harmful ones, with a specific focus on the pivotal role played by the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) neurotransmitter system and (2) how this knowledge can be exploited to develop functional safe alternatives to alcohol using either molecules already existing in nature or synthetic ones. This discussion will be complemented by an analysis of the regulatory challenges associated with the novel endeavour of bringing safe, functional alternatives to alcohol from the bench to bars.
Topics: Alcohol Drinking; Brain; Ethanol; gamma-Aminobutyric Acid
PubMed: 36145137
DOI: 10.3390/nu14183761 -
Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science... Jan 2023Alcohol-free beers have gained popularity in the last few decades because they provide a healthier alternative to alcoholic beers and can be more widely consumed.... (Review)
Review
Alcohol-free beers have gained popularity in the last few decades because they provide a healthier alternative to alcoholic beers and can be more widely consumed. Consumers are becoming more aware of the benefits of reducing their alcohol consumption, and this has increased the sales of nonalcoholic alternatives. However, there are still many challenges for the brewing industry to produce an alcohol-free beer that resembles the pleasant fruity flavor and overall sensory experience of regular beers. The aim of this review is to give a comprehensive overview of alcohol-free beer focusing on aroma chemistry. The formation of the most important aroma compounds, such as Strecker aldehydes, higher alcohols, and esters, is reviewed, aiming to outline the gaps in current knowledge. The role of ethanol as a direct and indirect flavor-active compound is examined separately. In parallel, the influence of the most common methods to reduce alcohol content, such as physical (dealcoholization) or biological, on the organoleptic characteristics and consumer perception of the final product, is discussed.
Topics: Beer; Odorants; Ethanol; Beverages; Aldehydes
PubMed: 36398756
DOI: 10.1111/1541-4337.13068 -
Langmuir : the ACS Journal of Surfaces... Aug 2021Properties of solvents such as polarity and H-bond-forming ability are critical for the formation of an organogel and have a significant impact on the gel behavior, as...
Properties of solvents such as polarity and H-bond-forming ability are critical for the formation of an organogel and have a significant impact on the gel behavior, as solvents are the majority of organogel systems. However, so far, there is still a lack of systematic studies regarding the effects of molecular structures of solvents on the characteristics of organogels. Motivated by revealing such a relationship, in this paper, we studied the morphologies of assemblies, gelation behaviors, and secondary structures of a pentapeptide termed EAF-5 in a wide variety of alcohols. The side chains and lengths of carbon chains of the solvent molecules were found to play a critical role in the self-assembly and gelation of EAF-5. EAF-5 was capable of self-assembling into fibers and entangling into a network in alcohols including ethanol, propanol, butanol, -pentanol, and -hexanol, which further immobilized the corresponding alcohols to form gels. In these organogels, increasing β-sheet secondary structures of the peptides were formed by introducing side chains and extending the length of primary alcohol molecules. We hypothesized that alcohol molecules with extended lengths and side chains reduced the gelator-solvent interactions and promoted the gelator-gelator interactions, resulting in the self-assembly of EAF-5 into fibril structures and development of gels. These findings provide a new sight into the interactions between gelators and solvents and are helpful for designing peptide-based organogelators.
Topics: Ethanol; Gels; Molecular Structure; Protein Structure, Secondary; Solvents
PubMed: 34297581
DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.1c00841