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Alcohol addiction ruins millions of lives every year, but scientists may have found a cure for this terrible affliction. A new treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD) has been trialled in monkeys with impressive results and, if these translate to human trials, the impact could be monumental. A team of neuroscientists and physiologists from across the US tested a new type of gene therapy to see if they could directly target the underlying brain circuitry associated with sustained heavy drinking. As they noted, in the journal Nature Medicine, people suffering from AUD commonly return to alcohol use even if they attempt to quit. This is largely to do with what’s known as mesolimbic dopamine (DA) signalling – meaning how the central nervous system circuit communicates the feelgood neurotransmitter dopamine. A protein called glial-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) is key to keeping these neurons in this reward circuitry functioning. However, experts have found that levels of GDNF are reduced in people with AUD during periods of alcohol abstinence, most notably in a region of the brain called the ventral tegmental area (VTA), as IFLScience notes. Therefore, the researchers decided to test whether using gene therapy to deliver more GDNF to the VTA could help reinforce this crucial dopaminergic signalling and prevent patients from suffering an alcoholic relapse. The team of scientists explained how alcohol consumption in non-addicts prompts the release of dopamine, creating a pleasurable buzz feeling, but chronic alcohol use causes the brain to adapt and stop releasing so much dopamine. “So when people are addicted to alcohol, they don’t really feel more pleasure in drinking,” Dr Kathleen Grant, a senior co-author of the study, said in a statement. “It seems that they’re drinking more because they feel a need to maintain an intoxicated state.” For their research, Dr Grant and her colleagues used eight rhesus macaque monkeys, who were exposed to increasing concentrations of alcohol over four 30-day “induction” periods. The monkeys then had free access to alcohol and water for 21 hours a day for six months, during which they developed heavy drinking behaviours. This was then followed by a 12-week abstinence phase, with the GDNF treatment performed four weeks in for half of the subjects. The gene therapy was delivered using a a viral vector containing a copy of the human GDNF gene injected directly into the primate’s VTA, according to IFLScience. And the results were truly jaw-dropping. “Drinking went down to almost zero,” Dr Grant said. “For months on end, these animals would choose to drink water and just avoid drinking alcohol altogether. They decreased their drinking to the point that it was so low we didn’t record a blood-alcohol level.” The most exciting aspect of their findings is the suggestion that gene therapy could offer a permanent solution for people with the most severe cases of AUD. This will be a welcome glimmer of hope to many, given that some 29.5 million people were diagnosed with AUD in the US alone in 2021, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Of these 29.5 million sufferers, almost a million (894,000) were aged between 12 and 17. It’ll likely be some time before we know for sure whether the gene therapy can be rolled out in humans, but it’s an important first step in tackling this devastating disorder. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition, despite the fancy name, is a simple device. It's exactly

TEL AVIV, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 22, 2023--

The Central Intelligence Agency has launched a new effort to capitalize on what US intelligence officials believe is an "unprecedented" opportunity to convince Russians disaffected by the war in Ukraine and life in Russia to share their secrets, posting a slickly produced, cinematic recruitment video online on Monday.

TikTok is now letting people around the world see who has visited their profile. The feature means that users can see when a person clicked onto their account – with some restrictions. Like other platforms such as LinkedIn, it means that when a logged-in users visits a profile they will appear in a list. That list can then be seen by the owner of the account, but nobody else. TikTok has been slowly rolling out the feature for more than a year. It was initially spotted by users who saw references to it hidden in the app, before it rolled out more generally – and it is now available to everyone. But it must be manually turned on, and so the change does not mean that you will have been exposed as visiting a profile without knowing about it. It can also be switched back off when it is enabled. There are a number of limitations on the feature, which are seemingly intended to protect privacy. Users need to be at least 16 to see it, for instance, and also have fewer than 5,000 followers. But mostly importantly the tool will only work for other people who have it turned on: users can only see people who visited their profile if they too have the profile view history option turned on. In that way, it is similar to other privacy features in apps such as WhatsApp. There, for instance, users can only see read receipts and information about when a user is online if they choose to give that information away about themselves. The feature is switched on by opening the profile page, clicking the settings button in the top-right corner, and then choosing the settings option. Click on settings and privacy, then privacy, and then profile views. That will open up the page and show the people who have been on a profile in the last month or so. If it is not switched on already, then that same page will offer the option to do so. The data only starts being shown from the moment the switch is turned on, meaning that there will be no way of seeing who had visited an account before then. To switch the feature off, click on one of the notifications that the app sends when someone has viewed your profile. That will take you to the same profile views page, which includes a settings cog that can be used to switch the history tool back off again. Read More Schoolboy almost dies from swallowing magnets for TikTok challenge Woman shares honest review of New York City apartment TikTok mom slammed after making 5-year-old son run in 104 degree heat

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SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 2, 2023--