There might finally be a way to enjoy alcohol without the hangover.
A research team led by Yunfeng Lu, a Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering professor at the University of California, has developed a pill that promises a quicker recovery from a problem that is all too common — drinking a bit too much.
Lu developed an antidote in the form of capsules filled with natural enzymes usually found in liver cells that help the body break down the alcohol into harmless molecules.
The team, which also includes Cheng Ji, an expert in liver diseases from Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, and Lu’s graduate student Duo Xu, then developed a safe way to deliver these natural enzymes to the liver by wrapping them in a shell made with U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved material.
They then tested the antidote on drunk mice by injecting the nanocapsules into their veins. Lu said that the enzymes successfully made their way to the circulatory system and eventually reached their destination, which is the liver. “They entered the cells and served as mini–reactors to digest alcohol,” he wrote on The Conservation.
Lu and company learned that the antidote decreased the drunk mice’s blood alcohol level by 45 percent in just four hours compared to the drunk mice that weren’t given the antidote.
The blood concentration of acetaldehyde, the highly toxic carcinogenic compound responsible for leaving the drinking person’s face red and of course the…
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