Obad Adam, Peeran Ahmed, Little Janay I, Haddad Georges E, Tarzami Sima T
Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Howard University, Washington, DC, United States.
Front Pharmacol. 2018 Feb 13;9:81. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2018.00081. eCollection 2018.
Alcohol is one of the most commonly abused substances in the United States. Chronic consumption of ethanol has been responsible for numerous chronic diseases and conditions globally. The underlying mechanism of liver injury has been studied in depth, however, far fewer studies have examined other organs especially the heart and the central nervous system (CNS). The authors conducted a narrative review on the relationship of alcohol with heart disease and dementia. With that in mind, a complex relationship between inflammation and cardiovascular disease and dementia has been long proposed but inflammatory biomarkers have gained more attention lately. In this review we examine some of the consequences of the altered cytokine regulation that occurs in alcoholics in organs other than the liver. The article reviews the potential role of inflammatory markers such as TNF-α in predicting dementia and/or cardiovascular disease. It was found that TNF-α could promote and accelerate local inflammation and damage through autocrine/paracrine mechanisms. Unraveling the mechanisms linking chronic alcohol consumption with proinflammatory cytokine production and subsequent inflammatory signaling pathways activation in the heart and CNS, is essential to improve our understanding of the disease and hopefully facilitate the development of new remedies.
酒精是美国最常被滥用的物质之一。全球范围内，长期饮用乙醇导致了众多慢性疾病和健康问题。肝脏损伤的潜在机制已得到深入研究，然而，研究其他器官尤其是心脏和中枢神经系统（CNS）的却少得多。作者对酒精与心脏病和痴呆症的关系进行了叙述性综述。考虑到这一点，炎症与心血管疾病和痴呆症之间的复杂关系早就被提出，但炎症生物标志物最近受到了更多关注。在本综述中，我们研究了酗酒者肝脏以外器官中细胞因子调节改变所产生的一些后果。本文回顾了炎症标志物如肿瘤坏死因子-α（TNF-α）在预测痴呆症和/或心血管疾病方面的潜在作用。研究发现，TNF-α可通过自分泌/旁分泌机制促进和加速局部炎症及损伤。阐明长期饮酒与心脏和中枢神经系统中促炎细胞因子产生以及随后炎症信号通路激活之间的联系机制，对于增进我们对该疾病的理解并有望推动新疗法的开发至关重要。
