Notably, the observation of cell death in the adolescent rat hippocampus following binge alcohol exposure is consistent with recent reports of morphological and inflammatory indices of neurodegeneration in adolescent rat models of AUDs and a lone report of apoptotic cell death after acute ethanol injections (Evrard et al., 2006; Jang et al., 2002; Pascual et al., 2007). Although neurodegeneration has been examined with deOlmos cupric silver stain in the brains of adolescent rats exposed to binge alcohol, only regions with visually distinct silver stain were quantified (Crews et al., 2000). Eight to ten dead cells per section, as observed here, may not be remarkably distinct at the magnification used for image analysis of silver stain. Further, the very low numbers of TUNEL+ cells compared to the FJB and Pyknotic data, suggest that the mechanisms of cell death is not likely apoptotic. FJB labeling and pyknotic nuclei are observed throughout the apoptosis-necrosis spectrum of cell death and cannot be used to differentiate the mechanism of cell death. However, TUNEL is a well-accepted marker of apoptosis (Gavrieli et al., 1992) and the
