Abstract
Background Alcohol consumption is widespread with over half of the individuals over 18 years of age in the U.S. reporting alcohol use in the last 30 days. Moreover, 9 million Americans engaged in binge or chronic heavy drinking (CHD) in 2019. CHD negatively impacts pathogen clearance and tissue repair, including in the respiratory tract, thereby increasing susceptibility to infection. Although, it has been hypothesized that chronic alcohol consumption negatively impacts COVID-19 outcomes; the interplay between chronic alcohol use and SARS-CoV-2 infection outcomes has yet to be elucidated.
Methods In this study we employed luminex, scRNA sequencing, and flow cytometry to investigate the impact of chronic alcohol consumption on SARS-CoV-2 anti-viral responses in bronchoalveolar lavage cell samples from humans with alcohol use disorder and rhesus macaques that engaged in chronic drinking.
Findings Our data show that in both humans (n = 6) and macaques (n = 11), the induction of key antiviral cytokines and growth factors was decreased with chronic ethanol consumption. Moreover, in macaques fewer differentially expressed genes mapped to Gene Ontology terms associated with antiviral immunity following 6 month of ethanol consumption while TLR signaling pathways were upregulated.
Interpretation These data are indicative of aberrant inflammation and reduced antiviral responses in the lung with chronic alcohol drinking.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2023
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2023.104812
Funding Information
We would like to thank Dr. Delphine Malherbe for critical reading of the manuscript, all the members of Dr. Kathy Grant for expert animal care, the Division of Comparative Medicine at the Oregon National Primate Center for sample collection, and Dr. Ellen Burnham’s team for providing human BAL samples. We would also like to acknowledge the funding sources supporting this study: NIH 1R01AA028735-04 (Messaoudi), U01AA013510-20 (Grant), R24AA019431-14 (Grant), R24AA019661 (Burnham), P-51OD011092 (ONPRC core grant support). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.
Repository Citation
Lewis, Sloan A.; Cinco, Isaac R.; Doratt, Brianna M.; Blanton, Madison B.; Hoagland, Cherise; Newman, Natali; Davies, Michael; Grant, Kathleen A.; and Messaoudi, Ilhem, "Chronic alcohol consumption dysregulates innate immune response to SARS-CoV-2 in the lung" (2023). Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics Faculty Publications. 170.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/microbio_facpub/170
Notes/Citation Information
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).