RT Journal Article T1 Alcohol-induced cognitive deficits are associated with decreased circulating levels of the neurotrophin BDNF in humans and rats A1 Silva Peña, Daniel A1 Martín Velasco, Ana Isabel A1 Villanúa Bernués, María Ángeles A1 Rubio Valladolid, Gabriel A1 Rodríguez De Fonseca, Fernando Antonio A1 Suárez Pérez, Juan AB Chronic alcohol consumption is associated with neurocognitive and memory deficits, dramatically affecting plasticityand connectivity, with maximal expression as dementia. Neurotrophic factors may contribute to alcohol-related cogni-tive decline. For further investigation, a cross-sectional study was performed to evaluate the association of cognitiveimpairment, by using frontal assessment battery, and memory loss, using memory failures everyday, with the circulat-ing levels of the neurotrophin brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and neurotrophin 3 (NT-3) in abstinent sub-jects with alcohol use disorders (AUDs,N= 58, average of 17.9 years of problematic use and 4.3 months of abstinence)compared with healthy control subjects (N= 22). This association was also explored in a pre-clinical model of adoles-cent rats chronically exposed to alcohol up to adulthood (~77 days old) in a three-bottle free-choice (5–10–20 per-cent), repeated abstinence and relapse paradigm. AUD subjects had low educational level and cognitive impairmentassociated with teenage consumption and lower circulating levels of BDNF and NT-3. Only BDNF concentrationshowed a positive correlation with frontal assessment battery in AUD patients. In the ethanol-exposed rats, the plasmalevels of BDNF and NT-3 were also decreased, and a negative correlation between hippocampalBdnfmRNA levels andrecognition memory was found. The ethanol-exposed rat hippocampus showed a decrease in the mRNA levels of neu-rotrophic (BdnfandNtf-3) and neurogenic (Mki67,Sox2,Dcx,Ncam1andCalb1) factors, associated to a deactivation ofthe neurogenic regulator mitogen-activated protein kinase extracellular signal-regulated kinase. Results suggest a rel-evant role of BDNF/extracellular signal-regulated kinase 2 signaling in alcohol-induced cognitive impairment and sug-gest that early alcohol exposure-derived effects on cognition are associated with neurotrophin signaling deficits. PB Wiley SN 1355-6215 YR 2019 FD 2019 LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/91312 UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/91312 LA eng NO Silva-Peña D., García-Marchena N., Alén F., Araos P., Rivera P., Vargas A., García-Fernández M. I., Martín-Velasco A. I., Villanúa M. Á., Castilla-Ortega E., Santín L., Pavón F. J., Serrano A., Rubio G., Rodríguez de Fonseca F., and Suárez J. (2019) Alcohol-induced cognitive deficits are associated with decreased circulating levels of the neurotrophin BDNF in humans and rats, Addiction Biology, 24, 1019–1033. https://doi.org/10.1111/adb.12668. NO European Commission NO Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España) NO Instituto de Salud Carlos III NO Red de Trastornos Adictivos NO Ministerio de Sanidad, Servicios Sociales e Igualdad (España) DS Docta Complutense RD 19 ene 2026