[Alcohol-related disturbances in haematopoiesis (author's transl)]

Alcohol-related disturbances are seen against the three blood cell systems. They appear after important alcohol consumption within few days and are independent from the existence of liver cirrhosis with splenomegaly. They are promptly and completely reversible after interruption of alcohol supply. Disturbances in erythropoiesis are manifested in bone marrow with megaloblasts, ring sideroblasts, and vacuoles in cytoplasma and nucleus of nucleated red cells. They are caused by folate deficiency and by perturbations of iron utilization, which is perhaps connected with impaired heme synthesis following pyridoxal phosphate deficiency. Serum iron generally increases during alcohol consumption and decreases in the following alcohol-free period. The anemia may be macrocytic and normochromic or dimorphic with hypochromic microcytes. Anemias of hard alcohol drinkers are observed also as consequence of bleeding or hemolysis of different causes. The lability against infections of drinkers is associated with changes in granulopoiesis. The most important findings are granulocytopenia, vacuoles in the immature marrow cells, perturbations in granulopoietic maturation, and decrease of marrow response. Frequently, alcohol drinkers demonstrate thrombocytopenia which is caused by ineffective thrombopoiesis and by shortened life span of platelets as direct effect of ethanol. Functional impairments of thrombocytes have been published, too.