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Saturday, September 12, 2009

The Mammalian Circadian Clock Exhibits Acute Tolerance to Ethanol
Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research Early View 9 Sep 2009

Tolerance to ethanol is observed over a variety of time courses, from minutes to days. Acute tolerance, which develops over 5 to 60 minutes, has been observed for both behavioral and neurophysiological variables and may involve changes in signaling through NMDA, GABA, or other receptors.

Previous work has shown that both acute and chronic ethanol treatments modulate photic and nonphotic phase resetting of the mammalian circadian clock located in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). Although not specifically tested, the data thus far do not point to the development of chronic tolerance to the modulatory effects of ethanol.

Here we investigated whether acute tolerance the ethanol occurs with respect to in vitro phase modulation of the SCN clock.

Both the inhibiting and enhancing effects of ethanol on in vitro SCN clock phase resetting show acute tolerance. Additional experiments are needed to determine whether more slowly developing forms of tolerance also occur with respect to the SCN circadian clock.


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