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Alcohol’s Burden on Immunity Following Burn, Hemorrhagic Shock, or Traumatic Brain Injury
The incidence of traumatic injury in alcohol-intoxicated individuals continues to escalate. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2012a), more than 38 million American alcohol users consume 5 or more drinks on the same occasion (i.e., binge drink) and do so about 4 times per month. This behavior is highly conducive to unintentional or accidental traumatic injury, which...
Alcohol's Effect on Host Defense
Alcohol has been the most common substance of use and abuse in human history. Moderate amounts of alcohol are enjoyed for its anxiolytic effects; however, its addictive properties can lead to chronic, excessive alcohol use and alcohol use disorder. In addition to its commonly recognized behavioral effects, alcohol affects many organs, including the immune system that controls the body’s defense...
Neuroimmune Function and the Consequences of Alcohol Exposure
Alcohol Use As a Risk Factor in Infections and Healing: A Clinician's Perspective
Alcohol use and misuse have been part of human society for centuries. Early physicians recognized since the 1800s that alcohol produced not only impairment of the senses but also higher predisposition for tuberculosis. William Osler, the father of scientific medicine, reported in 1905 that patients who misused alcohol had higher predisposition to pneumonia (Osler 2001).
Between 2006 and 2010 in...
Pathophysiology of the Effects of Alcohol Abuse on the Endocrine System
Alcohol and Viral Hepatitis: Role of Lipid Rafts
Alcohol is the most used and abused psychoactive drug worldwide. Alcohol use and misuse, including alcohol use disorder, can have devastating effects and account for 5.9 percent of deaths and 5.1 percent of the global burden of disease and injury, thereby also imposing a significant social and economic burden on society (World Health Organization 2015). Moreover, treatments for alcohol abuse have...
Macrophages and Alcohol-Related Liver Inflammation
Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) is a complex disease that affects millions of people worldwide and eventually can lead to liver cirrhosis and liver cancer (i.e., hepatocellular carcinoma). Aside from the direct cytotoxic and the oxidative-stress–mediated effects that alcohol and its metabolite, acetaldehyde, exert on hepatocytes, alcohol ingestion activates both the innate and adaptive immune...
The Gastrointestinal Microbiome: Alcohol Effects on the Composition of Intestinal Microbiota
It has been estimated that approximately 2 billion people worldwide drink alcohol on a daily basis, with more than 70 million people having a diagnosed alcohol use disorder (World Health Organization 2004). Globally, alcohol use is the fifth leading risk factor for premature death and disability among people between the ages of 15 and 49 (Lim et al. 2012). Excessive alcohol consumption in the...
Immune Function Genes, Genetics, and the Neurobiology of Addiction
The nervous system and the immune system interact closely to regulate the body’s immune responses, including inflammatory responses. Accordingly, the term “neuroimmune system” refers to the immune system and those components of the nervous system that help regulate immune responses and also encompasses the hormones and other signaling molecules that convey signals between the immune and nervous...
Epigenetic Targets for Reversing Immune Defects Caused by Alcohol Exposure
Extensive clinical and experimental data suggest that alcohol consumption has dose-dependent modulatory effects on the immune system that influence the two arms of the immune response (i.e., innate and adaptive immune responses). In many other organ systems, such as the brain and liver, alcohol consumption has been shown to alter factors that can modify gene expression without changing the DNA...
