Patterns of gene expression are altered in the frontal and motor cortices of human alcoholics.

摘要: Alcoholism is a major health problem in Western countries, yet relatively little known about the mechanisms by which chronic alcohol abuse causes pathologic changes associated with disease. It likely that alcoholism affects number of signaling cascades and transcription factors, turn result distinct gene expression patterns. These patterns are difficult to detect traditional experiments measuring few mRNAs at time, but well suited microarray analyses. We used cDNA microarrays analyze approximately 10 000 genes frontal motor cortices three groups alcoholic matched control cases. A functional hierarchy was devised for classification brain resulting were compared based on differential expression. Comparison these regions revealed selective reprogramming groups. The most pronounced differences found myelin-related involved protein trafficking. Significant alcohol-responsive genes, calcium, cAMP, thyroid pathways also identified. results suggest multiple may be important neuropathology altered neuronal function observed alcoholism.