Inyeong Choi
Emory University, GA·Physiology
Heavy or binge drinking combined with poor nutrition can tip the body into alcoholic ketoacidosis. In this dangerous state, the blood becomes acidic because the body burns fat and makes ketones in place of glucose.
- Fields
Physiology
Pharmacology
Neuroscience
- Topics
alcoholic ketoacidosis
alcohol use disorder
binge drinking
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2029
What they work on
- Measure more features of alcoholic ketoacidosis in a mouse model fed chronic-plus-binge alcohol while fasting, and test whether excess alcohol, poor nutrition and dehydration are truly its causes.
- Test whether acidosis arises partly from reduced NBCn1, a protein that moves bicarbonate to control pH, by knocking it down in mouse brain regions tied to alcohol reward.
- Test whether ketone production and lowered brain pH drive mice to drink more alcohol, creating a feedback loop that worsens ketoacidosis.
- Evaluate whether sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) treatment reduces alcoholic ketoacidosis, alters alcohol reward and protects mice against alcohol-induced liver injury.
More about the research
People with it can have a racing heart, agitation, abdominal pain and vomiting, and untreated cases can be fatal. Doctors still rely mainly on patient data collected decades ago. No study has directly tested what causes the condition or how it develops, which makes it hard to design ways to lower the risk.
Why it matters
People with alcohol use disorder who drink heavily while poorly nourished risk alcoholic ketoacidosis, a potentially fatal metabolic emergency. Clarifying its cause could help reduce that risk. Testing sodium bicarbonate, a simple pH-based approach, could provide a platform for developing a non-prescription product that helps chronic and binge drinkers cut excessive alcohol use.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Xiaoqin Wu
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Characterize liver immune cell populations and cell death after Gao-binge alcohol feeding in Mlkl bone-marrow chimeric mice, using flow cytometry of isolated non-parenchymal liver cells.
Samuel Centanni
Wake Forest University, NC·Neuroscience
Test whether stress-driven activity in the insula-BNST pathway predicts later binge and aversion-resistant ethanol drinking, following mouse models of stress and binge drinking over time.
Bernd Schnabl
University of California-San Diego, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether the sugar-adding enzyme Fucosyltransferase 2 (Fut2) on intestinal lining cells limits colonization and translocation of the gut bacterium Enterococcus faecalis and thereby reduces liver disease, using mouse models of ethanol feeding.
The school
Emory University: 70 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 286 research doctorates a year.
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