Once is not custom, a recent one study published in the journal Gut demonstrates that we are not all equal when it comes to alcohol. And the results of the researchers show in particular that its toxic effects on the liver are largely dependent on the microbiota intestinal, these thousands of bacteria that populate our intestines.
Thus, to seek to understand why certain heavy consumers of alcohol developed liver diseases and others not, researchers from Paris-Sud University, Inserm, AP-HP (Antoine-Béclère hospital), INRA, AgroParitech and Aix-Marseille University carried out a study on mice. Indeed, “we found an imbalance of the intestinal microbiota (dysbiosis) in patients with acute alcoholic hepatitis without it being found in patients consuming alcohol but not having severe liver disease”, explain the researchers.
To test their hypothesis, they “injected” the microbiota of alcoholic patients with acute alcoholic hepatitis into one group of mice and while the other received the microbiota of alcoholic patients without severe liver disease. The mice were alcoholized.
As a result, the mice in the first group developed inflammation of the liver and adipose tissue, as well as an increase in intestinal permeability greater than those in the other group. Furthermore, it was possible to reduce liver damage in diseased mice by transferring to them the microbiota of alcoholic patients who did not have liver damage. The results of this study are encouraging as they may open the way to new therapeutic treatments for alcoholism.
Alcohol, a real public health problem
L’alcohol remains a public health problem in France that kills 45,000 people a year. The short-term risks are of a social and psychological nature (loss of licence, car accidents, violence, depression) and long-term ones, are of a pathological nature, with physical dependence on the product, serious behavioral disorders (depression, suicide, insomnia) cirrhosis, cancers of the mouth, throat, oesophagus, intestine and liver, cardiovascular illnesses and thehigh blood pressure.
And, 1 in 5 deaths worldwide stems from the ravages of alcohol, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). 3.3 million people died of it in 2012, compared to 2.5 million in 2005. And 320,000 young people aged 15 to 29 die each year from alcohol-related causes, recalls the WHO.
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Alcohol: drinking a little too much, what is it?
Alcohol: the French drink too much
