Dec 31, 2013 08:52 AM EST By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

Teenagers indulging in weekend binge drinking are at a risk of damaging their DNA, a recent study reveals.

Researchers at the University of Basque Country in Spain and the Autonomous University of Nayarit in Mexico studied the effects of alcohol on students.

The authors decided to conduct this study after researcher Adela Rendón noticed that students at Clinical Biochemistry at the National Polytechnic Institute, Mexico, did not pay much attention in class and seemed to be distracted on Mondays.

The researchers divided the students into a drinking group and a control group that did not consume alcohol at all. The students were aged between 18 and 23 and their average consumption of alcohol was 118g, which is equivalent to a litre and a half of beer.

"We saw that the ones who drank (alcohol) sustained twice as much oxidative damage compared with the group that did not consume alcohol," researchers said in a press release. 

The researchers measured the activity of alcohol enzyme dehydrogenase, responsible for metabolizing ethanol into acetaldehyde, acetoacetate and acetone. They further decided to continue with a test to check whether the DNA was affected.  They extracted the nucleus of the lymphocytic cells in the blood and subjected it to electrophoresis (comet test). 

"The interesting thing is that if the chromatin is not properly compacted, if the DNA has been damaged, it leaves a halo in the electrophoresis," which is called, "the comet tail," said Rendon. The chromatin of the exposed group left a small halo, greater than that of the control group. 

The study results found that 44 percent students who boozed in the weekend were reported to have damaged their cells due to alcohol. But, only 8 per cent of those in the control group had damaged cells.

The researchers further found that significant harm to the DNA could only happen when the comet tail exceeds 20 nm, which was not the case in any participating student.

"Fortunately but the fact is, there should not have been any damage at all because they had not been consuming alcohol for very long, they had not been exposed in a chronic way," Rendon said. 

The World Health Organisation statistics stated that around 2.5 million global deaths occur every year due to alcohol. Youngsters between ages 19 and 25 account for 320,000 casualties, researchers said.

The study was published in the journal Alcohol.

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