How Alcohol Can Affect Your Immune System

As a result, they eventually need to drink more to notice the same effects they once did. Alcohol use can factor into mental health symptoms that closely resemble those of other mental health conditions. Chronic drinking can affect your heart and lungs, raising your risk of developing heart-related health issues.

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. Alcohol also impacts the function of immune cells of the central nervous system (CNS), particularly astrocytes and microglia. Astrocytes are major glial cells that regulate neuronal function and CNS homeostasis. Their ability to serve as antigen presenting cells and produce cytokines in vivo has been controversial (Dong and Benveniste 2001).

How does alcohol affect your immune system?

In fact, prolonged use of alcohol causes many problems throughout the body. Besides effects on the liver and other organs, an alcoholic experiences long-term immunity issues. To explain, alcohol has negative effects on the immune system on chemical and cellular levels. For example, it heightens the chance of developing an infection that a normal person would not catch. No one wants to participate in activities that suppress the body’s immune system.

There are several negative health problems that could arise due to frequent drinking. Since there is a link between alcohol and the immune system, things only escalate as heavy drinking continues. As a result, a person becomes vulnerable to infections that invade their body.

Innate vs. adaptive immunity

Chronic alcohol abuse leads to increased susceptibility to bacterial and viral infections, most notably a 3 to 7-fold increase in susceptibility (Schmidt and De Lint 1972) and severity (Saitz, Ghali et al. 1997) of bacterial pneumonia compared with control subjects. Similarly, the incidence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection among alcoholics is increased (Sabot and Vendrame 1969, Hudolin 1975, Kline, Hedemark et al. 1995, Panic and Panic 2001). Alcohol use has also been shown to drive disease progression in chronic viral infections such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) (Baum, Rafie et al. 2010) and Hepatitis C (Bhattacharya and Shuhart 2003).

• If you drink, you’ve probably had some experience with alcohol’s effects, from the warm buzz that kicks in quickly to the not-so-pleasant wine headache, or the hangover that shows up the next morning.
• However, it is important to realize that many aspects of alcohol consumption and its effects on immunity and host defense have not yet been fully elucidated.
• Earlier this year, Medical News Today reported on a study suggesting that consuming a glass of wine a day may reduce the risk of depression, while other research suggests a compound found in red wine could help treat cancer.
• Alcohol abuse has an adverse effect on hematopoiesis and can cause leukopenia, granulocytopenia, and thrombocytopenia in humans (Latvala et al. 2004).
• B-cells are responsible for the humoral arm of the adaptive immune response.
• The dendritic cell (DC), which plays a critical role in T cell activation and initiation of adaptive immune responses, is another innate immune cell affected by ethanol.

Similarly, an increased percentage of CD8 T cells expressing HLA-DR and CD57 was reported in the group of male alcoholics with self reported average alcohol consumption of approximately 400g/day for approximately 26 years (Cook, Ballas et al. 1995). Taken together, these studies suggest that chronic alcohol-induced T cell lymphopenia increases T cell activation and homeostatic proliferation resulting in increased proportion of memory T cells relative to naïve T cells. In contrast, moderate alcohol increased frequency of lymphocytes (Figure 1). These disruptions to the composition of the gut microbiota and to gut barrier function have important implications beyond the intestinal system. For example, Nagy discusses how the leakage of bacterial products from the gut activate the innate immune system in the liver, triggering inflammation that underlies ALD, a condition that affects more than 2 million Americans and which eventually may lead to liver cirrhosis and liver cancer. Infection with viral hepatitis accelerates the progression of ALD, and end-stage liver disease from viral hepatitis, together with ALD, is the main reason for liver transplantations in the United States.

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In addition, PMNs participate in the regulation of the local defense response by releasing signaling molecules called cytokines and chemokines (e.g., tumor necrosis factor [TNF]-α; interleukin [IL]-1β, IL-6, and IL-8; and macrophage inflammatory protein [MIP]-2). These molecules help recruit and activate additional PMNs as well as macrophages to the site of an injury or infection. For instance, IL-1 induces HPA axis activation and glucocorticoid release that suppresses the immune system (Sapolsky, Rivier et al. 1987). Cytokines are also proposed to cross the blood-brain barrier and produce sickness behavior (Watkins, Maier et al. 1995), which is comorbid with AUD (Dantzer, Bluthe et al. 1998). Ethanol administration (4g/kg) in male rats increased IL-6 but decreased TNF-α expression in PVN, an effect that was blunted or reversed after long-term ethanol self-administration (Doremus-Fitzwater, Buck et al. 2014).

This defective neutrophil recruitment could be partially restored by localized chemokine administration (Quinton et al. 2005). Both the innate and the adaptive immune response are critical for effective host defense to infectious challenges. Multiple aspects of both arms of the immunity response are significantly affected by alcohol abuse, as described in the following sections. does alcohol weaken your immune system Vitamin E is one of the most effective antioxidants and its deficiency exacerbates freeradical damage impairing the ability of T cells to respond to pathogenic challenge (Mocchegiani, Costarelli et al. 2014). Similarly, vitamin C, also an antioxidant, is important for phagocytic activity of neutrophils and monocytes, and enhances T cell responses (Strohle and Hahn 2009).

Long-term effects of alcohol misuse

The initial activation triggers a memory response in the form of memory B cells that remain in the circulation for long periods and can respond quickly when they encounter that antigen a second time to mount a stronger, more rapid response. It is also critical to take into consideration that the effects of ethanol on immune function in vivo could involve the actions of its primary metabolite, acetaldehyde. Therefore, more studies looking at the effects of ethanol metabolites in vivo are needed. Acetaldehyde has also been shown to affect NFκB-induced cytokine production in various liver cells. Finally, acetaldehyde disrupts intestinal epithelial barrier function and increases paracellular permeability which plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of alcoholic liver disease by a tyrosine kinase-dependent mechanism (Sheth, Seth et al. 2004). The body constantly is exposed to pathogens that penetrate either our external surface (i.e., the skin), through wounds or burns, or the internal surfaces (i.e., epithelia) lining the respiratory and gastrointestinal (GI) tracts.

Alcohol use can begin to take a toll on anyone’s physical and mental well-being over time. These effects may be more serious and more noticeable if you drink regularly and tend to have more than 1 or 2 drinks when you do. Past guidance around alcohol use generally suggests a daily drink poses little risk of negative health effects — and might even offer a few health benefits. Alcohol can cause both short-term effects, such as lowered inhibitions, and long-term effects, including a weakened immune system. There’s been an uptick in non-alcoholic drink options, as more and more companies are creating alternatives. A 2020 study found that when weekly drinkers were presented with and aware of increased non-alcoholic options, they were likely to choose them.