A cure for drunkenness? Edible gel lowers blood alcohol levels in inebriated mice

Could a glass of milk help you sober up after a night of heavy drinking? Probably not, but a dairy-based hydrogel just might do the trick. At least, that’s what the authors of a study discovered when they fed the concoction to laboratory mice that had gotten absolutely sloshed on ethanol.

Since alcoholic beverages are so popular around the globe, people often overlook the dangers associated with getting drunk. But consumption poses a significant threat to public health, causing an average of three million deaths each year. And although current methods of alleviating alcohol intoxication—which are typically administered through an IV drip—can offer temporary relief from nausea and headaches, they fail to address other underlying issues and sometimes even cause toxic compounds to build up in the body.

To create the new antidote, researchers turned to beta-lactoglobulin: a common whey protein that is produced as a byproduct when milk gets fermented into cheese. The team combined the protein with iron particles to create a gelatinous nanomaterial, mimicking the structure and properties of a natural enzyme that breaks down alcohol.

Administering this goo to inebriated rodents caused their blood alcohol levels to reduce by more than 55 percent after just four hours, all without causing any harmful side effects. Mice that consumed the gel before getting drunk, meanwhile, seemed to be protected from many of the liver and intestinal problems associated with chronic alcoholism. In fact, their organs were “nearly indistinguishable from mice who didn’t drink alcohol at all,” study author Raffaele Mezzenga told New Scientist . Of course, whether the gel has a similar effect in humans—and whether it tastes any good—remains to be seen.

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Published: 13 May 2024

Single-site iron-anchored amyloid hydrogels as catalytic platforms for alcohol detoxification

Jiaqi Su, Pengjie Wang, Wei Zhou, Mohammad Peydayesh, Jiangtao Zhou, Tonghui Jin, Felix Donat, Cuiyuan Jin, Lu Xia, Kaiwen Wang, Fazheng Ren, Paul Van der Meeren, F. Pelayo García de Arquer & Raffaele Mezzenga

Nature Nanotechnology (2024) Cite this article

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Abstract

Constructing effective antidotes to reduce global health impacts induced by alcohol prevalence is a challenging topic. Despite the positive effects observed with intravenous applications of natural enzyme complexes, their insufficient activities and complicated usage often result in the accumulation of toxic acetaldehyde, which raises important clinical concerns, highlighting the pressing need for stable oral strategies. Here we present an effective solution for alcohol detoxification by employing a biomimetic-nanozyme amyloid hydrogel as an orally administered catalytic platform. We exploit amyloid fibrils derived from β-lactoglobulin, a readily accessible milk protein that is rich in coordinable nitrogen atoms, as a nanocarrier to stabilize atomically dispersed iron (ferrous-dominated). By emulating the coordination structure of the horseradish peroxidase enzyme, the single-site iron nanozyme demonstrates the capability to selectively catalyse alcohol oxidation into acetic acid, as opposed to the more toxic acetaldehyde. Administering the gelatinous nanozyme to mice suffering from alcohol intoxication significantly reduced their blood-alcohol levels (decreased by 55.8% 300 min post-alcohol intake) without causing additional acetaldehyde build-up. Our hydrogel further demonstrates a protective effect on the liver, while simultaneously mitigating intestinal damage and dysbiosis associated with chronic alcohol consumption, introducing a promising strategy in effective alcohol detoxification.

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