Nov. 26 (UPI) -- Researchers have found a gene in mice that regulates alcohol consumption, which when mutated could lead to excessive drinking.

A group of researchers from five UK universities studied how mice with a mutation to the Gabrb1 gene led to an overwhelming preference to alcohol over water.


Mice with the mutation consumed alcohol for nearly 85 percent of their daily liquid, while those without the mutation showed no particular preference between water and diluted alcohol.

"We are continuing our work to establish whether the gene has a similar influence in humans, though we know that in people alcoholism is much more complicated as environmental factors come into play," said joint lead author Dr. Quentin Anstee, Consultant Hepatologist at Newcastle University.

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Despite those additional factors, Anstee says "there is the real potential for this to guide development of better treatments for alcoholism in the future." The group's findings are published in Nature Communications.

One of the teams, led by Professor Howard Thomas from Imperial College London, set out to introduce genetic mutations into mice and check for changes in alcohol preference. This led them to identify the Gabrb1 gene as the one responsible.

Mice with that mutated gene would consistently work to obtain alcohol over water and would within an hour be inebriated and have trouble coordinating their movements.

"Alcohol addiction places a huge burden on the individual, their family and wider society. There's still a great deal we don't understand about how and why consumption progresses into addiction, but the results of this long-running project suggest that, in some individuals, there may be a genetic component," said Hugh Perry, chair of the Medical Research Council's Neurosciences and Mental Health Board.

[Imperial College London] [Nature Communications]

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