The effects of corn peptide ingestion on facilitating alcohol metabolism in healthy men.

We prepared corn peptide (CP), a vegetable oligopeptide and tried to discover the effects of its ingestion on facilitating alcohol metabolism in healthy adult men. Ten healthy male volunteers ingested 5 g of CP, wheat peptide (WP), pea peptide (PP), alanine, or leucine 30 min before alcohol intake at a dose of 0.5 g/kg, and blood ethanol and plasma amino acid concentrations were measured during a 2-h observation period after alcohol intake. In subjects who ingested CP, the blood ethanol level was lower than that in the WP, alanine and leucine ingestion groups, but did not decrease as compared to the control when they ingested PP. Similarly there was a difference in the blood ethanol level between alanine and leucine ingestion groups, and leucine ingestion was more effective than alanine against the reduction of the increase in blood ethanol level. On the other hand, there was no significant difference in the plasma concentrations of individual amino acids except alanine, leucine, or lysine after alcohol intake among experimental groups as compared to the control. CP ingestion significantly elevated plasma alanine and leucine rather than other groups during a 2-h observation period. These results suggested that CP may have the effect on the reduction of increase in blood ethanol level after alcohol intake by the marked elevation of plasma alanine and leucine, especially leucine, but neither by the delay of ethanol release from the stomach nor malabsorption of ethanol in the gastrointestinal tracts.