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Original Article

Structural assessment of the experimental alcohol-treated brain

Pages 69-73 | Published online: 12 Jul 2009
 

Abstract

Quantitative assessment of the protein content and synaptic density of various brain regions in experimental animals have been two popular techniques for demonstrating the effects of treatment with ethanol. There do exist other methods of assessing loss of nervous tissue after ethanol treatment which are less time-consuming than chromatography and electron microscopy. Superfusion provides an uncomplicated direct measuring technique of applying any toxin to central nervous tissue, and Nauta staining of light microscopy sections provides an indicator of brain regions most sensitive to the toxin. Past experiments by various researchers involving long periods of ethanol treatment to experimental animals can be better designed to provide further insight into the mechanisms by which the alcoholic condition leads to brain damage. This involves a different approach in such a way as to separate brain damage during withdrawal from that occurring during intoxication, and to separate brain damage due to interacting treatments (as in the case of thiamin deficiency and ethanol administration) from that due to the accumulative sum of such treatments. The advantages of such approaches will be described.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

S.C. Phillips

Both authors formerly Public Health Officers, Eastern Sydney Area Public Health Unit Previously general practitioner, Orange NSW, Australia.

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