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Alcohol myopathy: impairment of protein synthesis and translation initiation

C H Lang1, S R Kimball, R A Frost

  • 1Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology (H166), Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA 17033, USA. clang@psu.edu

The International Journal of Biochemistry & Cell Biology
|May 2, 2001
PubMed

Insights

Alcohol impairs muscle protein synthesis by disrupting translation initiation, specifically reducing eukaryotic initiation factor 4E availability. This contributes to alcoholic myopathy, affecting both skeletal and cardiac muscles.

Area of Science:

  • Muscle physiology
  • Molecular biology
  • Biochemistry

Background:

  • Alcohol consumption induces significant morphological, biochemical, and functional changes in skeletal and cardiac muscle.
  • A key effect is the reduced rate of protein synthesis, partly due to decreased translation efficiency.
  • This review focuses on alcoholic myopathy and the molecular mechanisms of alcohol's impact on muscle protein synthesis.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To review molecular mechanisms by which alcohol impairs protein synthesis in muscle.
  • To contextualize these findings within existing knowledge of alcoholic myopathy.
  • To highlight recent advances in understanding alcohol's effects on translational control.

Main Methods:

  • Review of existing literature on alcohol's effects on muscle protein synthesis.
  • Analysis of molecular pathways involved in translation initiation.
  • Examination of the role of eukaryotic initiation factors (eIFs) and associated complexes.

Main Results:

  • Both acute and chronic alcohol exposure impair translational control by affecting peptide-chain initiation.
  • Alcohol decreases the availability of eukaryotic initiation factor (eIF) 4E in striated muscle.
  • This is evidenced by increased inactive eIF4E.4E-BP1 complexes and decreased active eIF4E.eIF4G complexes.
  • Alcohol does not consistently alter translation initiation control by the eIF2 system.

Conclusions:

  • Alcohol-induced impairment of protein synthesis in muscle is linked to reduced translation initiation efficiency.
  • Decreased availability of eIF4E is a key mechanism underlying alcohol's detrimental effects on muscle protein synthesis.
  • Defects in anabolic hormones like insulin-like growth factor-I may contribute to alcohol-induced decreases in protein synthesis and translation initiation.

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