The British New Scientist Weekly website reported on September 30th that excessive alcohol consumption will not only make you mentally retarded but will also weaken your immune system and make you more susceptible to a variety of viruses including HIV.
To study how alcohol affects the immune system, Genji Szabo and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Medical School put mononuclear cells, which are directly involved in the fight against infection, into chemicals that mimic viruses and bacteria. Half of these cells are also immersed in alcohol at the same concentration as a person drinking 4 to 5 glasses a day for a week.
Alcohol damages monocyte resistance. When those cells that are over-alcoholic are exposed to the simulated virus, the amount of type I interferon, the antiviral signal molecule they produce, is only a quarter of that of non-alcoholic monocytes.
"Interferon is the key and the primary response to any viral infection," Schober said. "Without it, the virus cannot be eliminated."
In experiments simulating the bacterial environment, those "drunk" mononuclear cells performed even worse. Not only do they produce half of the interferons, they also overproduce an inflammatory chemical called tumor necrosis factor alpha. Although this chemical is important to elicit an inflammatory response against bacteria, over-manufacturing it can also damage the tissue.
Shobo said the findings are consistent with evidence that medical records of people with long-term alcohol abuse who died of HIV were faster than non-drinkers. Previous studies have also shown that the alcoholics’ immune system is even less alert to cancer.
Mark Hutchinson of the University of Adelaide, Australia, said that the results of the study are consistent with the data showing that under the autopsy the long-term alcoholics had lower than normal levels of immune substances in their blood.
In another study published this week, Hutchinson and colleagues conducted experiments with mice and found that mononuclear cells in the brain may be related to the dullness of alcoholics.
"We are studying brain immune cells, and their response to alcohol seems to be different from that of blood immune cells," said Hutchinson.
His team found that blocking an antibacterial receptor for monocytes in the brain prevented rats from becoming dull after exposure to alcohol.
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