While the research left some other scientists unconvinced, it represented a foray into an area of medicine that doesn't get much study. That may be because hangovers elicit little sympathy, said alcoholism researcher Robert Swift, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University's Alpert Medical School.
"There are people who feel that one deserves to get a hangover, a negative consequence of drinking that might deter further drinking," he said.
Deserved or not, the affliction has stricken mankind at least since biblical times, as another researcher noted a few years ago in the Annals of Internal Medicine. See Isaiah 5:11, which says, "Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink."
The new study was overseen by Michael L. Oshinsky, director of preclinical research at the Jefferson Headache Center.
In the journal PLoS One, he and colleagues wrote that they began by giving an "inflammatory soup" to the rats - administered through a small hole in the skull, multiple times over a three-week period, to make them more sensitive. Such rats have previously been shown to be extra-sensitive to some of the same chemicals that trigger migraines in humans.
The researchers then gave the animals the equivalent of one alcoholic drink, and they proceeded to block various steps in the pathway of metabolizing alcohol, so as to see which by-products led to headache-like symptoms.
They concluded that the problem starts with a chemical called acetate. Excess acetate leads in turn to the formation of adenosine, which accumulates in the brain and appears to be a chief culprit in headaches, the authors wrote.
