http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34407/title/Buffering-Against-Alcohol
A group has discovered a way to lower blood alcohol levels in mice. A new technique is used to assemble multiple enzymes that break down the alcohol in the blood stream and has also shown to reduce liver damage.
When they fed mice a diet of alcohol and the nanocomplex (AOx–Cat), they found that blood alcohol concentration (BAC) was reduced by 10 percent at 45 minutes, by 32 percent after an hour and a half, and 37 percent after 3 hours, compared with significantly smaller reductions in mice fed alcohol and just one of the enzymes, with or without a polymer shell.
But the alcohol oxidation process produces a toxic intermediate called acetaldehyde. They believe that with this new technique of assembling and containing multiple enzymes they could break down the acetaldehyde.
Imagine if everyone could be drunk on New Year's Eve, take a tablet and be sober in under 2 hours and drive home? Sounds good to me. Bars could sell them. You close out your tab at the end of a long night, pop a pill, hang out for a bit and drive away DUI free.
That would be an incredibly useful buffer tablet. From the data given it looks like its peak effectiveness is at an hour and a half. It could certainly help reduce the amount of undetected DUIs that occur everyday. This close knit complex of enzymes must be hard to mimic since the body can break down these delicate molecules very easily in the blood stream
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