HOPE FOR A ‘BUZZ KILL’ PILL

Sober-up fast Rx eyed

A new hormone shot could be your solution to getting sober faster.

In a study published Tuesday in the journal Cell Metabolism, researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern suggested that the hormone FGF21 might be able to reverse the effects of alcohol in half the time.

The hormone — fibroblast growth factor 21 — works to help regulate your metabolism, according to the National Library of Medicine.

“FGF21 mediates its anti-intoxicant effects by directly activating noradrenergic neurons in the locus coeruleus region, which regulates arousal and alertness,” the researchers wrote in the study.

In humans, FGF21 is naturally produced in our livers, but having an extra dose of it could be helpful when drinking, the study claims.

In the study, the scientists experimented with giving two kinds of mice the hormone after they were injected with a “binge dose” of ethanol, the compound found in alcoholic beverages that makes you drunk. The mice who didn’t have FGF21 took longer to recover from the injection.

In another experiment, they injected the mice with ethanol again, and then about one hour later while unconscious, the animals were given a dose of recombinant FGF21. Scientists wrote that this was able to reduce the amount of time that both male and female mice needed to “recover their righting reflex” by 50%.

The “righting reflex,” which corrects the position of one’s head and the position of the body, is “a standard marker of inebriation,” scientists explained.

This means that it was able to bring the mice out of their intoxication a lot quicker than the animals could without a dose of the hormone.

Promising Rx

“These results suggest that this FGF21 liver-brain pathway evolved to protect against ethanol-induced intoxication and that it might be targeted pharmaceutically for treating acute alcohol poisoning,” the researchers wrote in the study.

However, there were a few limitations in the study, including whether or not the noradrenergic system, a part of your brain that helps control the nervous system, can contribute to the effects of the FGF21 hormone.

The study’s “results reveal a mechanism for selectively targeting noradrenergic neurons that could prove useful for treating both the loss of consciousness and impaired mobility that occur during acute alcohol poisoning,” scientists wrote.