Alcohol is a serious public health concern that has a differential impact on individuals depending upon age and sex. Patterns of alcohol consumption have recently changed: heavy episodic drinking—known as binge-drinking—has become most popular among the youth. Herein, we aimed to investigate the consequences of intermittent adolescent alcohol consumption in male and female animals. Thus, Wistar rats were given free access to ethanol (20% in drinking water) or tap water for 2-h sessions during 3 days, and for an additional 4-h session on the 4th day; every week during adolescence, from postnatal day (pnd) 28–52. During this period, animals consumed a moderate amount of alcohol despite blood ethanol concentration (BEC) did not achieve binge-drinking levels. No withdrawal signs were observed: no changes were observed regarding anxiety-like responses in the elevated plus-maze or plasma corticosterone levels (pnd 53–54). In the novel object recognition (NOR) test (pnd 63), a significant deficit in recognition memory was observed in both male and female rats. Western Blot analyses resulted in an increase in the expression of synaptophysin in the frontal cortex (FC) of male and female animals, together with a decrease in the expression of the CB2R in the same brain region. In addition, adolescent alcohol induced, exclusively among females, a decrease in several markers of dopaminergic and serotonergic neurotransmission, in which epigenetic mechanisms, i.e., histone acetylation, might be involved. Taken together, further research is still needed to specifically correlate sex-specific brain and behavioral consequences of adolescent alcohol exposure.

Insulin-degrading enzyme (IDE) was named after its role as a proteolytic enzyme of insulin. However, recent findings suggest that IDE is a widely expressed, multitask protein, with both proteolytic and non-proteolytic functions. Here, we characterize the expression of IDE in the mammalian retina in both physiological and pathological conditions. We found that IDE was enriched in cone inner segments. IDE levels were downregulated in the dystrophic retina of several mouse models of retinitis pigmentosa carrying distinct mutations. In rd10 mice, a commonly studied mouse model of retinitis pigmentosa, treatment with an IDE activator (a synthetic peptide analog of preimplantation factor) delayed loss of visual function and preserved photoreceptor cells. Together, these results point to potential novel roles for IDE in retinal physiology and disease, further extending the list of diverse functions attributed to this enzyme.