{"id":40183,"date":"2011-10-09T15:44:29","date_gmt":"2011-10-09T15:44:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/how-booze-can-make-you-sick%e2%80%94and-not-just-while-you%e2%80%99re-drunk-80beats\/"},"modified":"2011-10-09T15:44:29","modified_gmt":"2011-10-09T15:44:29","slug":"how-booze-can-make-you-sick%e2%80%94and-not-just-while-you%e2%80%99re-drunk-80beats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/how-booze-can-make-you-sick%e2%80%94and-not-just-while-you%e2%80%99re-drunk-80beats.php","title":{"rendered":"How Booze Can Make You Sick\u2014and Not Just While You\u2019re Drunk | 80beats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/80beats\/2011\/10\/05\/how-booze-can-make-you-sick-and-not-just-while-youre-drunk\/whiskey\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-32252\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/50c5e_whiskey.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"224\" height=\"400\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a>Booze inhibits more than just your judgement: it impairs your immune system&rsquo;s ability to fight off pathogens, according to a <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.biomedcentral.com\/1471-2172\/12\/55\/abstract\">study published last week<\/a> in the journal <em>BMC Immunology<\/em>. Researchers exposed human <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Monocyte\">monocytes<\/a>, a type of white blood cell vital for a functioning immune system, to an amount of alcohol equivalent to a&nbsp;<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Blood_alcohol_content\">blood alcohol concentration<\/a> of 0.1 (around the legal level in most states). Compared to booze-free cells, monocytes exposed to both short- and long-term levels of alcohol produced significantly less&nbsp;<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Interferon_type_I\">type 1 interferons<\/a>, chemicals the help recruit immune cells to stage an antiviral response (and also have anti-tumor activity). Excessive drinking has long been thought to <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.elc.org.uk\/pages\/healthimmunesystem.htm\">interfere with the body&rsquo;s ability to fight disease<\/a>, and boozing is an important risk factor for hepatitis C and barrier to treatment in HIV. But not much had been known about the mechanisms behind the effect.<\/p><p><span><\/span>But the findings of the study weren&rsquo;t all so cut and dry. For instance, cells bathed in alcohol for only a few hours showed a notable decrease in the production of&nbsp;<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tumor_necrosis_factor-alpha\">tumor necrosis factor-alpha<\/a>, an chemical that&rsquo;s helpful in fighting pathogens but is also associated with inflammatory-related chronic conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel syndrome. Monocytes exposed to near constant levels of alcohol for a week, however, showed the opposite: a significant increase in TNF-a. More research will be required to pin down the health-related effects of these chemical fluctuations.<\/p><p><strong>Reference<\/strong>: Maoyin Pang, Shashi Bala, Karen Kodys, Donna Catalano and Gyongyi Szabo. Inhibition of TLR8- and TLR4-induced Type I IFN induction by alcohol is different from its effects on inflammatory cytokine production in monocytes. <em>BMC Immunology<\/em>, 2011. DOI: <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.biomedcentral.com\/1471-2172\/12\/55\/abstract\">10.1186\/1471-2172-12-55<\/a><\/p><p><em>Image: <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/feastguru_kirti\/5396934673\/sizes\/m\/in\/photostream\/\">Kirti Poddar<\/a> \/ Flickr&nbsp;<\/em><\/p><p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/_V_k8CE0wtLhdaDgKUBRMiGZIBM\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/50c5e_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><br><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/_V_k8CE0wtLhdaDgKUBRMiGZIBM\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/50c5e_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/50c5e_nhjwHknIf44\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/50c5e_3M6zI_B5agc\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Booze inhibits more than just your judgement: it impairs your immune system&rsquo;s ability to fight off pathogens, according to a study published last week in the journal BMC Immunology. Researchers exposed human monocytes, a type of white blood cell vital &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/how-booze-can-make-you-sick%e2%80%94and-not-just-while-you%e2%80%99re-drunk-80beats.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40183"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}