Influence of acute and chronic ethanol treatment on interferon production in mice

The effect of acute (single dose) and long-term ethanol treatment of Swiss Albino and C3H/He mice on IFN production stimulated in vitro by NDV, PHA and ConA was examined. Liver organ cultures and spleen cells of mice which received intraperitoneally a single dose (2 g/kg of body weight) of ethanol (II group) or were drinking ethanol solutions instead of water for 4 weeks (III group) or for 8 weeks (IV group), and cells of control mice not treated with ethanol (I group) were cultivated in vitro. Some of the cultures were treated with 0.4% (w/v) ethanol or several IFN inducers NDV-R, PHA and ConA or incubated without any stimulators. The titers of IFN in supernatant fluids were measured. The results showed that cells from mice, which received a single ethanol injection, produced IFN spontaneously and this production was enhanced in the presence of 0.4% ethanol in culture medium. When spleen cell cultures of acute treated mice were induced with PHA and ConA, IFN titers lower than in cells of the control mice were produced. In contrast to these results, liver and spleen cells of mice after long term ethanol consumption produced significantly lower IFN titers than controls after NDV-R induction. Also spleen cells responded poorly both to PHA and ConA induction. These results demonstrate that long-term ethanol treatment can destroy IFN response to viral infection and can impair mitogen-induced IFN production. This suppression of IFN production by long term ethanol was similar in both strains of the mice examined.