However, the difference in the rates are not apparent until after age 17.Drug and Alcohol Dependence reports that older adults abuse drugs including alcohol at a rate of 15-20%. Its estimated that 52 million Americans beyond 12 years old have abused a substance. Alcohol dependence or abuse rates were shown to have no correspondence with any persons education level when populations were surveyed in varying degrees of education from ages 26 and older. However, when it came to illicit drug use there was a correlation, in which those that graduated from college had the lowest rates. Furthermore, dependence rates were greater in unemployed populations ages 18 and older and in metropolitan-residing populations ages 12 and older. The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago reported an analysis on disparities within admissions for substance abuse treatment in the Appalachian region, which comprises 13 states and 410 counties in the Eastern part of the U.S. While their findings for most demographic categories were similar to the national findings by NSDUH, they had different results for racial/ethnic groups which varied by sub-regions. Overall, Whites were the demographic with the largest admission rate (83%), while Alaskan Native, American Indian, Pacific Islander, and Asian populations had the lowest admissions (1.8%). Legislation
Depending on the jurisdiction, addictive drugs may be legal, legal only as part of a government sponsored study, illegal to use for any purpose, illegal to sell, or even illegal to merely possess.
Therefore, cancer cells which divide much more rapidly than most other cells in the body will be more severely affected by decitabine just because they replicate more. In cancer cells, and more specifically in haematological malignancies, it seems that DNA hypermethylation is really critical for their development. Methylation of CpG islands upstream of tumor suppressor genes in order to silence them seems to be critical for these type of cancers. Thus at optimal doses, decitabine blocks this type of methylation and has an anti-neoplastic effect. Research
Atherosclerosis
A number of investigators have shown a relationship between atherosclerosis and disturbed blood flow. This upregulates DNA methyltransferase expression, which leads to genome-wide DNA methylation alterations and global gene expression changes. These studies have revealed several mechanosensitive genes, such as HoxA5, Klf3, and Klf4, whose promoters were hypermethylated by disturbed blood flow, but rescued by DNA methyltransferases inhibitors such as 5-aza-2-deoxycytidine. It has been found that use of this DNA methyltranferase inhibitor prevents atherosclerosis lesion formation and reduces the production of inflammatory cytokines by macrophages. References
Further reading
Moon C, Kim SH (June 2009). "Use of epigenetic modification to induce FOXP3 expression in naïve T cells". Transplant. Proc. 41 (5): 1848–1854. doi:10.1016/j.transproceed.2009.02.101. PMID 19545742. External links
"Decitabine". Drug Information Portal. U.S. National Library of Medicine.