Does Alcohol Weaken the Immune System? Yes, If You Drink Too Much

does alcohol compromise your immune system

Abstinence partially restored antibody responses against hepatitis antigens in a mouse model (Encke and Wands 2000). Another aspect of cell-mediated immunity that is affected by ethanol consumption is the delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH) response. DTH refers to a cutaneous T-cell–mediated inflammatory reaction that takes 2 to 3 days to develop. One early study (Lundy et al. 1975) showed defects in cell-mediated immunity in male alcoholic patients admitted for detoxification, in response both to a new antigen and to an antigen to which they had previously been exposed. A more recent study (Smith et al. 2004) reported that a negative correlation existed between the amount of alcohol consumed by the participants and the size of DTH skin test responses to a specific antigen (i.e., keyhole limpet hemocyanin). For instance, genetically modified BALB/c mice that carried a TCR specific for the ovalbumin peptide and were fed a diet containing 30 percent ethanol-derived calories exhibited decreased antigen-specific Th1 responses (Waltenbaugh et al. 1998).

Modulation of Immunity by Nutritional Change in AUD

Whereas T-cells are primarily involved with cell-mediated immunity, B-cells play a major role in humoral immunity. Healthy habits, such as being active, eating a balanced diet, and getting enough sleep, can keep your immune system strong. But unhealthy factors, like stress, smoking, or drinking alcohol, can be taxing for your immune system and make it harder for it to fight off infection. But there’s plenty of research to back up the notion that alcohol does lead to weight gain in general.

The effect of chronic binge ethanol consumption on the primary stage of SIV infection in Rhesus macaques

does alcohol compromise your immune system

It is no surprise that the key to boosting your immune system is a healthy lifestyle—which includes good nutrition, plenty of sleep, regular exercise, no smoking, and avoidance of stress.12 And if you drink alcohol, drinking in moderation is also on the list. The frequency at which a person drinks also determines how much it affects the immune system. A person who drinks every day is more likely to have a weakened immune system and experience health complications than someone who rarely drinks or only drinks on occasion. It’s caused by a bacterial infection that begins elsewhere in the body, such as in the gut, lungs, skin, bladder, or kidneys, and enters the bloodstream. Septicemia is a serious condition because it can cause the bloodstream to carry bacteria and toxins throughout the entire body. Without rapid hospital treatment, septicemia can lead to sepsis, which is life-threatening.

Hepatitis C and alcohol: interactions, outcomes, and implications

does alcohol compromise your immune system

This damage to the DNA most likely was mediated by ROS generation in response to RAS activation. Treatment with a compound that activates the VDR (i.e., a VDR agonist) restored the T cell’s VDR expression, down-regulated RAS expression as well as ROS generation, and thus preserved T-cell survival (Rehman et al. 2013). Acute and chronic alcohol exposure can interfere with various aspects of the adaptive immune response, including the antigen presentation required to activate T- and B-cells, the activity of CD4+ and CD8+ T-cells, and the activity of B-cells. The induced innate humoral response plays a critical role in clearing or containing infection while an adaptive response develops. It is characterized by the release of mediators of inflammatory reactions, such as cytokines and chemokines, as well as activation of the complement cascade.

Acetaldehyde inhibits NF-kappaB activation through IkappaBalpha preservation in rat Kupffer cells

In addition, viral infections induce the production of various IFNs and acute-phase proteins. The first line of host defense involves both structural (i.e., epithelial) cells and immune https://rehabliving.net/ cells (i.e., macrophages and dendritic cells) at mucosal surfaces. The epithelial cells function as a physical barrier as well as regulators of the innate and adaptive immunity.

  1. 1T-cell activation was assessed by measuring the expression of human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-DR on the patient’s CD8 cells.
  2. Animals were provided daily injections of ethanol for a week, after which they were challenged intranasally with Klebsiella pneumoniae.
  3. Such studies can be challenging to conduct in humans because of difficulties in obtaining accurate medical histories, maintaining adherence, confounding factors such as diet, sleep-wake cycles, and ethical considerations when studying large doses of ethanol.

Short-term effects of alcohol on the immune system

Chronic alcohol consumption decreases the number of circulating T cells, increases the number of activated T cells, accelerates differentiation of T cells to a memory phenotype, and interferes with thymocyte development. 5IgA is an antibody that plays a critical role in immune responses in the mucous membranes. These membranes line the body cavities exposed to the external environment (e.g., the GI tract, respiratory tract, nostrils, mouth, or eyelids) and therefore are likely to come in contact with outside pathogens. 4Expression of TNF-α and IL-1β requires the actions of a protein called nuclear factor (NF)- B. The activity of this protein is regulated by another molecule, inhibitor of NF- B (I B). Alcohol acts on this molecule (i.e., decreases phosphorylation of I B), thereby allowing I B to attach to NF- B, interfering with its activation of cytokine expression (Mandrekar et al. 1999).

Early studies already had indicated that chronic alcohol abuse (i.e., for 12 to 15 years) resulted in reduced numbers of peripheral T cells (Liu 1973; McFarland and Libre 1963). More recent studies confirmed this observation and showed that the lack of lymphocytes (i.e., lymphopenia) was as severe in people who engaged in a short period of binge drinking as it was in individuals who drank heavily for 6 months (Tonnesen et al. 1990). Interestingly, abstinence for 30 days was sufficient to restore lymphocyte numbers back to control levels (Tonnesen et al. 1990). Similar findings were obtained in animal models, where the number of T cells in the spleen decreased in mice fed a liquid diet (i.e., Lieber-DeCarli diet) containing 7 percent ethanol for as little as 7 days (Saad and Jerrells 1991) or 6 percent ethanol for 28 days (Percival and Sims 2000). Likewise, adult male Sprague-Dawley rats consuming liquid diets containing up to 12 g ethanol/kg/day for 35 days exhibited significantly reduced absolute numbers of T cells (Helm et al. 1996). Male rats on a liquid diet with 35% of calories coming from ethanol also showed enhanced mRNA half-life and protein expression of LPS-induced TNF-α by increasing TNF-α in liver monocytes/macrophages (Kishore, McMullen et al. 2001).

does alcohol compromise your immune system

But just like a muscle, the immune system can become weak and fail to protect you against infection as well. “Excessive alcohol consumption can cause nerve damage and irreversible forms of dementia,” Dr. Sengupta warns. Those who have any of the known risk factors for COVID-19, like heart disease or diabetes, should drink even less.

Specifically, 24 hours of exposure to both low (1mM) and high (5mM) concentrations of acetaldehyde stimulate IL-6 secretion, however, 7 days of exposure to the high concentration of acetaldehyde, significantly decrease IL-6 secretion (Sarc, Wraber et al. 2011). In contrast, both acute (24 hours) and prolonged (7 days) exposure to low and high concentrations of acetaldehyde reduce TNF-α secretion by primary rat astrocyte (Sarc, Wraber et al. 2011). Ethanol consumption by weanling ICR (outbred) mice (adjusted to 6% in their drinking water) for 8 weeks also resulted in 75% fewer CD3+ T cells (Percival and Sims 2000). Likewise, male rats fed an ethanol-containing liquid diet (8.7% v/v for up to 4 weeks) experienced a progressive loss of both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells (Boyadjieva, Dokur et al. 2002). Increased apoptosis of T and B lymphocytes isolated from the thymus, spleen, and lymph nodes of female mice was observed following 16 hour culture with 0.4%-2% ethanol, concentrations 5 to 25 times the definition of intoxication (Slukvin and Jerrells 1995).

Moreover, a recent systematic comparison examining gene expression changes found that temporal gene response patterns to trauma, burns, and endotoxemia in mouse models correlated poorly with the human conditions (Seok, Warren et al. 2013). Nonhuman primates, on the other hand, voluntarily consume different amounts of alcohol and allow us to conduct studies in an outbred species that shares significant physiological and genetic homology with humans while maintaining rigorous control over diet and other environmental cues. Moreover, immune systems of several nonhuman primate species are similar to those of humans and these animals are susceptible to several clinically important pathogens making them a valuable model to study the impact of ethanol on immunity (Hein and Griebel 2003). Costly requirements such as dedicated facilities to house the animals, experienced personnel to perform specialized procedures, and compliance with high standards of care must be considered. Recently, it was reported that a single episode of binge alcohol consumption in alcohol-experienced human volunteers (men and women) initially (within the first 20 min) increased total number of peripheral blood monocytes and LPS-induced TNF-α production when blood alcohol levels were ~130mg/dL. However, similarly to the in vitro studies described above, at 2 and 5 hours post-binge the numbers of circulating monocytes were reduced and levels of antiinflammatory IL-10 levels were increased (Afshar, Richards et al. 2014).

Similarly, as with the Th1 responses, alcohol inhibits the ability of dendritic cells to promote Th17 responses, thereby favoring Th2 responses (Heinz and Waltenbaugh 2007). Chronic drinking — for 12 to 15 years — can lead to a reduction in the number of T cells. Extremely heavy drinking — about 30 drinks per day — can throw off the balance of immune system cells.

They also found that the likelihood of someone having persistent HPV increased with the number of drinks per sitting. As discussed above in the gene expression studies, the mechanisms by which ethanol exerts dose-dependent effects on the immune system could also include modulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which tightly regulates the stress response, in turn affecting immunity. Response to different stressors is mediated by several neural circuits that converge on the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) of the hypothalamus (Myers, McKlveen et al. 2014).

Specifically, people who had consumed 30.9 ± 18.7 alcoholic drinks/day for approximately 25.6 ± 11.5 years exhibited a decreased frequency of naïve (i.e., CD45RA+) CD4 and CD8 T cells, as well as an increased frequency of memory T cells (i.e., CD45RO+) (Cook et al. 1994). Another study conducted in humans with self-reported average alcohol consumption of approximately 400 g/day also found an increase in the percentage of both CD45RO+ memory CD4 cells and CD8 cells (Cook et al. 1995). Thus, studies in C57BL/6 mice demonstrated that chronic ethanol consumption (20 percent ethanol in water for up to 6 months) decreased the frequency of naïve T cells and increased the percentage of memory T cells (Song et al. 2002; Zhang and Meadows 2005). This loss of naïve T cells could result from decreased T-cell production in the thymus; increased cell death (i.e., apoptosis) of naïve T cells; or increased homeostatic proliferation. Additional analyses detected evidence that T-cell proliferation in the spleen was increased in alcohol-consuming mice (Zhang and Meadows 2005). Together, these observations suggest that chronic alcohol consumption results in lymphopenia, which can increase homeostatic proliferation and accelerate conversion of naïve T cells into memory T cells (Cho et al. 2000).

Alcohol use can cause respiratory complications such as pneumonia, empyema, respiratory syncytial virus, tuberculosis, lung abscess, and adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). “Anything above https://rehabliving.net/ibuprofen-and-alcohol-is-it-safe-to-mix-otc/ that, regardless of time period, is exposing your body to more alcohol than is ideal,” says Favini. The morning after a night of over-imbibing can cause some temporary effects on your brain.

Finally, Dr. Sander summarized data from a mouse model of ethanol exposure designed to explore some of the same issues in mice (Lanzke et al., 2007). Animals were provided daily injections of ethanol for a week, after which they were challenged intranasally with Klebsiella pneumoniae. Pneumoniae exhibited altered frequencies of cytokine producing splenic CD4+ and CD8+ T cells compared with infected animals that did not receive ethanol. Pneumoniae challenged mice produced lower levels of IFN-γ but higher amounts of TNF-α again demonstrating the ability of ethanol exposure to alter cytokine responses after infection.

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