April is Alcohol Awareness Month

The University of Louisville has an NIH-funded P50 Alcohol Center (ULARC) that focuses on nutrition and organ injury. ULARC faculty members have two exciting articles that are in press or have just been published dealing with use of a specific probiotic bacterium (Lactobacillus GG—LGG) in the treatment of alcohol-associated liver disease and alcohol-use disorder.

In the first study, a multi-center clinical trial showed that LGG, attenuated liver injury and, more importantly, reduced drinking in patients with early alcohol-associated liver disease (The Beneficial Effects of Lactobacillus GG Therapy on Liver and Drinking Assessments in Patients with Moderate Alcohol-Associated Hepatitis).

In the second study, UofL investigators showed that the LGG bacteria actually produced substances that provided beneficial effects to the gut and liver of alcohol-treated mice. These exciting results provide potential novel therapies for alcohol-use disorder as well as alcohol-associated liver disease (Probiotic-derived nanoparticles inhibit ALD through intestinal miR194 suppression and subsequent FXR activation).

One more exciting paper titled "Ethanol exposure disrupted the formation of radial glial processes and impaired the generation and migration of outer radial glial cells in forebrain organoids derived from human embryonic stem cells" has just published in Experimental Neurology this month, and is featured on the front cover of this journal.