Peana Alessandra T, Rosas Michela, Porru Simona, Acquas Elio
Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy, University of Sassari, Sassari, Italy.
Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy.
J Exp Neurosci. 2016 Nov 20;10:137-146. doi: 10.4137/JEN.S25099. eCollection 2016.
In spite of the global reputation of ethanol as the psychopharmacologically active ingredient of alcoholic drinks, the neurobiological basis of the central effects of ethanol still presents some dark sides due to a number of unanswered questions related to both its precise mechanism of action and its metabolism. Accordingly, ethanol represents the interesting example of a compound whose actions cannot be explained as simply due to the involvement of a single receptor/neurotransmitter, a scenario further complicated by the robust evidence that two main metabolites, acetaldehyde and salsolinol, exert many effects similar to those of their parent compound. The present review recapitulates, in a perspective manner, the major and most recent advances that in the last decades boosted a significant growth in the understanding on the role of ethanol metabolism, in particular, in the neurobiological basis of its central effects.
尽管乙醇作为酒精饮料中具有精神药理活性的成分享有全球声誉，但由于与其精确作用机制和代谢相关的一些问题尚未得到解答，乙醇对中枢神经系统作用的神经生物学基础仍存在一些不明确之处。因此，乙醇是一个有趣的例子，其作用不能简单地归因于单一受体/神经递质的参与，而且有确凿证据表明，两种主要代谢产物乙醛和salsolinol发挥了许多与其母体化合物相似的作用，这使得情况更加复杂。本综述以一种前瞻性的方式概括了过去几十年中取得的主要和最新进展，这些进展极大地促进了我们对乙醇代谢作用的理解，尤其是其对中枢神经系统作用的神经生物学基础的理解。
