Abstract
BackgroundResidual alcohol effects on physiological and psychological symptoms are commonly experienced the morning after alcohol consumption. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of L-ornithine on subjective feelings and salivary stress markers the morning after alcohol consumption and to investigate whether L-ornithine acutely accelerates ethanol metabolism.MethodsThis study had a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-masked crossover design. Subjects were all healthy Japanese adults with the ‘flusher’ phenotype for alcohol tolerance. In experiment 1, 11 subjects drank 0.4 g/kg body weight alcohol 1.5 h before their usual bedtime. Half an hour after drinking, they ingested either a placebo or 400 mg ornithine. The next morning on awakening, subjects completed a questionnaire containing a visual analog scale (VAS), the Oguri-Shirakawa-Azumi sleep inventory MA version (OSA-MA), and a profile of mood states (POMS) and collected a saliva sample for measurement of salivary stress markers (cortisol, secretory immunoglobulin A, and α-amylase). In experiment 2, placebo or 400 mg ornithine were administrated to 16 subjects both before and after drinking, and the feeling of drunkenness, breath ethanol concentration and one-leg standing time were repeatedly investigated until 180 min after alcohol consumption.ResultsThere were significant decreases in “awareness”, “feeling of fatigue” and “lassitude” VAS scores and in “anger-hostility” and “confusion” POMS scores and a significant increase in “sleep length” in the OSA-MA test. Salivary cortisol concentrations on awakening were reduced after ornithine supplementation. There were no differences between ornithine and placebo in any of the subjective or physiological parameters of acute alcohol metabolism.ConclusionsTaking 400 mg ornithine after alcohol consumption improved various negative feelings and decreased the salivary stress marker cortisol the next morning. These effects were not caused by an increase in acute alcohol metabolism.
Highlights
Residual alcohol effects on physiological and psychological symptoms are commonly experienced the morning after alcohol consumption
Mean visual analog scale (VAS) and profile of mood states (POMS) scores were lower and Oguri-Shirakawa-Azumi sleep inventory MA version (OSA-MA) and “vigor” POMS scores were higher after ornithine supplementation than after placebo
These changes indicate that ornithine supplementation resulted in a better subjective mood, with significant improvements in VAS scores for “awareness”, “feeling of fatigue”, and “lassitude”, the OSAMA scores for “sleep length”, and the POMS scores for “anger-hostility” and “confusion” (Table 1)
Summary
Residual alcohol effects on physiological and psychological symptoms are commonly experienced the morning after alcohol consumption. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of L-ornithine on subjective feelings and salivary stress markers the morning after alcohol consumption and to investigate whether L-ornithine acutely accelerates ethanol metabolism. L-ornithine is an amino acid that is not incorporated in proteins but functions in the urea cycle in the liver. Ornithine is used to decrease blood ammonia concentrations and reduce the symptoms of hepatic encephalopathy associated with liver cirrhosis [6]. Alcohol consumption transiently increases blood ammonia levels [9,10]. Both ammonia and alcohol are toxic and mainly metabolized in the liver, and there is some evidence that their respective metabolisms influence each other [11]. Non-flushers are homozygous for wild type ALDH2 and have normal alcohol metabolism
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