Nature Metabolism, the University of Science and Technology of China, published an article reporting on the neural mechanisms of alcohol and cannabis synergy that lead to dyskinesia

Psychoactive drugs such as alcohol and tetrahydrocannabinol Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), are widely reported to cause dyskinesia

On September 15, 2022, the journal Nature Metabolism published a research paper online titled "Combined alcohol and cannabinoid exposure leads to synergistic toxicity by affecting cerebellar Purkinje cells".

Professor Xiong Wei's research group of the University of Science and Technology of China has been working closely with the clinic for a long time, and comprehensively used multidisciplinary research methods such as electrophysiological patch clamps, drug screening, neural circuit tracing, in vivo imaging of small animals and mass spectrometry analysis to study the regulatory effects

In this latest Nature Metabolism paper, the researchers first demonstrated in mouse models that the combination of alcohol and THC can lead to more severe dyskinesia behavior

In addition, the researchers used small animal imaging, fluorescent probes, and mass spectrometry to find that alcohol can speed up the entry of THC into the brain, suggesting that low doses of alcohol can lead to increased permeability of the blood-brain barrier in a very short period of time, accelerating THC's crossing of the blood-brain barrier, and further enhancing the synergistic effect

Zou Guichang, a special associate researcher of the University of Science and Technology of China, and Xia Jing, a doctoral student, are the co-first authors of the paper, and Professor Xiong Wei is the sole corresponding author

Illustration: Schematic diagram of alcohol and cannabinoids causing dyskinesias in synergy

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