Anxiety and binge drinking can be cured through gene editing a “factory reset” for the brain.

Adolescent binge drinking causes genetic reprogramming in the brain, which can be reversed by gene editing.

According to the findings of an animal study published in the journal Science Advances on May 4, 2022, gene editing could be a potential treatment for anxiety and alcohol use disorder in people who were exposed to binge drinking throughout their teens.

Researchers from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) released the study, which looked into the impacts of binge drinking in childhood on later health.

Binge drinking in adolescence affects brain chemistry at the enhancer region of the Arc gene — for activity-regulated cytoskeleton-associated protein immediate-early gene — and lowers Arc expression in the amygdala of both rodents and humans, according to previous study by the UIC team. In adulthood, this epigenetic reprogramming of the Arc gene in the brain’s emotion and memory centre contributes to an increased risk of anxiety and alcohol use disorder.

The authors reveal in their new study that epigenetic reprogramming, which occurs throughout life, may be reversed via gene editing.

Graph of Brain Waves
A recent animal study found that gene editing can restore the genomic reprogramming caused by binge drinking during adolescence.

Adolescent binge drinking causes genetic reprogramming in the brain, which can be reversed by gene editing.

According to the findings of an animal study published in the journal Science Advances on May 4, 2022, gene editing could be a potential treatment for anxiety and alcohol use disorder in people who were exposed to binge drinking throughout their teens.

Researchers from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) published a study on the impacts of binge drinking in childhood.

Anxiety was measured using behavioural tests, such as documenting the exploratory activity of rats in maze tests, and alcohol preference was measured by tracking the amount of liquid consumed when the rats were given a choice of two bottles containing tap water, sugar water, and varying concentrations of alcohol (3 percent , 7 percent , and 9 percent ).

Adult rats without prior alcohol exposure were tested in a second model. Arc expression was reduced and markers of anxiety and alcohol intake rose when inhibitory dCas9 was employed to promote methylation, which tightens chromatin and blocks transcription factors from binding to DNA.

The authors write, “These findings show that epigenomic editing in the amygdala can alleviate adult psychopathology following adolescent alcohol consumption.”

“Adolescent binge drinking is a serious public health problem, and this study 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 detected in both directions confirms the role of the Arc enhancer gene in the amygdala in adolescent binge drinking epigenetic reprogramming.”

John Peyton Bohnsack, Huaibo Zhang, Gabriela Wandling, Donghong He, Evan Kyzar, and Amy Lasek, all of UIC, are co-authors of the paper, “Targeted epigenomic editing ameliorates adult anxiety and excessive drinking following adolescent alcohol exposure.”

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (U01AA019971, U24AA024605, P50AA022538, and F32AA027410), as well as the Department of Veterans Affairs, funded the study.