Effects of Acute Alcohol Intoxication on Testicular Dna Stability, Gene Expression of Cytochromes CYP3A and CYP2E1, and Serum Pool of Free Amino Acids in Rats

Abstract

Background. Alcohol's toxic effects on the organism is a long-known medical problem. Alcohol's damaging effect is the end result of the complex interplay between ethanol metabolism, inflammation and innate immunity. Previously, we studied the long-term consequences of chronic alcoholism and demonstrated that especially profound changes were in testes on the level of proteome and genome. Objective. This work aimed to study short-term acute alcohol intoxication (AAI) effects for rat testis DNA fragmentation, cytochromes CYP3A and CYP2E1 genes expression, and serum pool of free amino acids in rats. Methods. Wistar albino male rats were divided into 2 groups (8 animals in each group): 1 – Control (intact rats), and 2 – AAI (rats with short-term acute alcohol intoxication). AAI was induced by repeated administration per os 40% ethanol solution in a dose 7 ml/kg body weight, for 7 days. Contents of amino acids in serum, testes mRNA CYP2E1 and CYP3A2 expression, and DNA fragmentation were evaluated. Results. In our experiments, the development of acute alcohol intoxication (AAI) led to increased DNA fragmentation processes in the testes of adult rats compared to the control group. Additionally, in the serum of ethanol-treated rats, the levels of histidine increased by 1.67 times and glutamine by 1.13 times in correlation with this pathology. Conversely, the levels of valine, phenylalanine, as well as non-essential and essential amino acids, decreased. Furthermore, there was a statistically significant increase in the expression of CYP2E1 and CYP3A2 genes in rat testes under the conditions of AAI. Conclusions. In conclusion, investigation of rats' short-term alcohol administration effects permitted us to obtain the picture of complex metabolomic changes at the different levels. The main outcome of rats short-term ethanol administration in our experiments seems to be to some extent similar to changes described for rats with chronic alcohol consumption. Our results demonstrated profound changes in testes affecting the state of the genome, transcription processes and the exchange of amino acids and proteins. We suggest that the revealed testicular metabolic disorders could have negative implications on cellular regulation of spermatogenesis even under short-term ethanol exposure.

Keywords

• acute alcohol intoxication
• DNA fragmentation
• gene expression
• CYP450
• pool of free amino acids
• testis