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Monday, May 4, 2009

Ethanol Promotes Thiamine Deficiency-Induced Neuronal Death: Involvement of Double-Stranded RNA-activated Protein Kinase
Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research Published Online: 23 Mar 2009
Thiamine deficiency caused death of CGNs but ethanol did not. However, TD plus ethanol induced a much greater cell loss than TD alone. TD-induced PKR phosphorylation and ethanol exposure significantly promoted TD-induced PKR phosphorylation as well as its nuclear translocation. A selective PKR inhibitor not only protected CGNs against TD toxicity, but also abolished ethanol potentiation of TD-induced loss of CGNs.

Ethanol promoted TD-induced PKR activation and neuronal death. PKR may be a convergent protein that mediates the interaction between TD and ethanol.
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