A group of scientists said they were able to establish the cause of the binge. So during the implementation of the study, it was found that a person can drink a lot of alcohol due to the malfunctioning of the GIRK3 gene. The scientists published the results of the work in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
The study of scientists was carried out on mice. At first, geneticists did not notice any changes in rodents, which lacked the GIRK3 gene. But later, when the researchers began experiments that mimicked bar gatherings, they got unpredictable results. When the rodents had access to alcohol, the subjects with the malfunctioning of the gene got drunk “as a lord,” which cannot be said about the mice in which the GIRK3 gene worked normally.
In addition, it was found that mice lacking this gene could go into binge drinking due to the fact that alcohol affects them weaker than their normal relatives. Interestingly, when a copy of a piece of DNA was added in rodents, the opposite reaction was noted: those mice that had previously consumed little alcohol began to drink more.
According to scientists, the results of this study suggest that the problem of drunken alcoholism can be solved medically, provided that scientists manage to synthesize a substance that would multiply the work of the GIRK3-channels in the body of drunken alcoholics and contribute to their recovery from binge drinking.