Moderate alcohol consumption and the immune system: a review

Couples who had sex more than twice a week had lower levels of IgA than those who had no sex at all. If you use it regularly, you may have the same breathing problems you can get from nicotine cigarettes. That means coughing up colored mucus called phlegm and a higher chance of lung infections. Ethanol is primarily metabolized in the stomach and liver by alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) and cytochrome P450 2E1 (CYP2E1) (Zakhari 2006).

• Interestingly, exposing mice for three or four weeks to alcohol produces higher levels of TLR4 in liver macrophages compared to control mice.
• 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).
• Mice fed with alcohol (average blood level 139.1 mg/dl) for ten days had higher expressions of mRNA of all TLRs in the liver, except TLR3 and TLR5, while TLR10 and TLR11 were not tested [29].
• T cells expressing the CD4 T cell co-receptor are known as T helper cells and play a critical role in the activation and maturation of monocytes, cytotoxic T cells and B cells.

However, all immunoglobulins produced by one B-cell and its daughter cells specifically recognize the same antigen. Alcohol can have a range of harmful effects on the body, which can diminish a person’s immune response and put them more at risk for COVID-19. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), moderate drinking is defined as no more than four alcoholic drinks on any single day for men and no more than 14 in total over a week. For women, this reduces to three drinks on any single day and no more than seven drinks over a week.

Mental Effects of Alcohol: Effects of Alcohol on the Brain

Cognitive effects of alcohol use may include memory loss, problems with learning, dementia, and severely hindered mental functioning in most severe cases.10 Seeking alcohol addiction treatment is the first step in preventing or reducing the negative effects of alcohol on the brain. Nicotine from cigarettes, chewing tobacco, or any other source can weaken your body’s ability to fight germs. Other chemicals in e-liquids seem to suppress your immune response, especially when you inhale them through vaping. Constant stress takes an even bigger toll and makes it harder to fend off the flu, herpes, shingles, and other viruses. Talk to your doctor if you can’t shake your worry or if it gets in the way of normal life. 2 Opsonization is a process by which a pathogen or other antigen is covered with antibodies and thereby marked for ingestion and destruction by other immune cells (i.e., phagocytic cells).

Alcohol feeding suppresses the production and secretion of certain acute-phase proteins (i.e., type II cell surfactant). This effect may contribute to lung injury in response to inflammation (Holguin et al. 1998). By illuminating the key events and mechanisms of alcohol-induced immune activation or suppression, research is yielding deeper insights into alcohol’s highly variable and sometimes paradoxical influences on immune function. The insights summarized in this issue of ARCR present researchers and clinicians with opportunities to devise new interventions or refine existing ones to target the immune system and better manage alcohol-related diseases. To this end, heavy drinkers have been shown to exhibit an increase in both IgA and IgM levels when compared to both moderate and light male drinkers.

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)

Molecular mechanisms of the dose-dependent effects of alcohol on the immune system and HPA regulation remain poorly understood due to a lack of systematic studies that examine the effect of multiple doses and different time courses. There may be important differences in the effects of ethanol on the immune system depending on whether the study is conducted in vitro or in vivo, as the latter allows for a complex psychogenic component in which stress-related hormones and immune-signaling molecules interact. In addition, most studies have been done in vitro using does alcohol weaken your immune system primary cells or cell lines in the presence of rather high, constant doses of ethanol. Similarly, most rodent studies to date have focused on acute/short-term binge models utilizing high concentration of ethanol (20% ethanol) as the sole source of fluid, a possible stressor in itself. Therefore, there is a pressing need for in depth studies that examine dose-dependent effects of chronic ethanol consumption on immunity in vivo to allow for the complex interactions between ethanol, its metabolites, HPA signaling, nutritional deficiencies, and the immune system.