Anxiety and binge drinking can be treated with gene editing and a brain "factory reset."

 Binge drinking throughout adolescence leads to genetic remodeling with in brain, that can be corrected by gene editing.

Gene editing could be a viable method for treating anxiety and alcohol use disorder in people who were exposed to binge drinking throughout their teens, as per the results of an animal study published in the journal Science Advances on May 4, 2022.

The study, which looked into the effects of binge drinking in youth on subsequent health, was published by scientists from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC).

According to a recent study by the UIC team, binge drinking in adolescence alters neurochemistry at the enhancer area of the Arc gene — for activity-regulated cytoskeleton-associated protein immediate-early gene — and reduces Arc expression in the amygdala of both mice and humans. This epigenetic remodeling of the Arc gene in the brain's emotion and memory centres increases the likelihood of anxiety and alcohol use problem in adults.

In their current study, the scientists explain that epigenetic remodeling, which occurs entire life, can be undone via gene editing.

Graph of Brain Waves

A study on the effects of binge drinking in youth was published by researchers from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC).

Alcohol preference was assessed by tracking the amount of liquid ingested when rats were given an option of two vessels containing tap water, sugar water, and differing concentrations of alcohol  (3%, 7%, and 9%). Anxiety was recorded using behavioural tests, such as cataloguing the explorative activity of rats in maze.

A second model was used to examine adult rats who had never been exposed to alcohol. When inhibitory dCas9 was used to enhance methylation, which shrinks chromatin and prevents transcription factors from binding to DNA, arc expression was reduced and anxiety and alcohol intake were increased.

"These data suggest that epigenomic editing in the amygdala can reduce adult psychopathology after adolescent alcohol intake," the authors write.

"Adolescent binge drinking is a serious public health issue, and this research not only helps us better understand what happens in developing brains when they are exposed to high levels of alcohol, but it also gives us hope that one day we will have effective treatments for the complex and multifaceted diseases of anxiety and alcohol use disorder," said Pandey, who is also a senior research career scientist at Jesse Brown VA Medical Center. "The fact that this effect was observed in both directions supports the hypothesis that the Arc enhancer gene in the amygdala plays a role in adolescent binge drinking epigenetic reprogramming."

The publication "Targeted epigenomic editing ameliorates adult anxiety and excessive drinking following teenage alcohol exposure" was co-authored by John Peyton Bohnsack, Huaibo Zhang, Gabriela Wandling, Donghong He, Evan Kyzar, and Amy Lasek, all of UIC.