Alcohol May Hasten HIV Immunity Decline

Alcohol abuse among people infected with HIV can impair the person’s immune system, leading to infections like pneumonia, say U.S. researchers.

Study findings published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research show that chronic binge drinking can accelerate the progression of end-stage simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) among rhesus macaques, likely mimicking what happens to humans infected with HIV.

Previous research has found that HIV-infected people are more likely to consume alcohol than the general population, said Gregory J. Bagby of Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center and corresponding author for the study. One very recent study conducted in Miami, for example, found that more than 60 percent of its HIV-infected participants reported heavy alcohol use.

Bagby says there are two key findings — chronic binge alcohol consumption accelerated time to AIDS of rhesus macaques infected with SIV, a virus that mimics what happens to humans infected with HIV, from 900 days in control animals to 374 days in the alcohol-treated rhesus monkeys.

Second, animals receiving alcohol had higher viral loads in the blood in the early months after being infected with the virus. This higher viral load is associated with more rapid disease progression in both SIV-infected rhesus macaques and HIV-infected humans.