The CIE treatment led to lower expression of most of the genes in the cholesterol biosynthesis pathway. Three brain regions, dorsal raphe nucleus, periaqueductal gray, and ventral hippocampus, from CIE treated adolescent P rats also had lower expression of cholesterol synthesis genes (McClintick et al., 2015, 2016, 2018). Lower expression of the genes in cholesterol biosynthesis pathway was also detected in lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) from alcoholics, compared to cells from controls (McClintick et al., 2019), although 48 h treatment with 75mM ethanol to LCLs did not result in decreased expression of these genes (McClintick et al., 2019). Lower expression was also found in post-mortem frontal cortex, basolateral amygdala and temporal cortex of alcoholics compared to controls (Mayfield et al., 2002; Ponomarev, Wang, Zhang, Harris, & Mayfield, 2012; Sokolov, Jiang, Trivedi, & Aston, 2003).
