Acetaldehyde causes a prolongation of the doubling time and an increase in the modal volume of cells in culture.

The effects of culturing four human cell lines--Raji, MOLT-4, WI-L2, and K562--in the presence of 10-360 microM acetaldehyde for 3-18 days have been investigated. Concentrations of 45-360 microM caused a prolongation of the cell doubling time, and those of 90-360 microM caused an increase in the modal cell volume and in the protein content per cell. The results indicate that relatively low concentrations of acetaldehyde cause an impairment of cell proliferation and an abnormality of cell growth in vitro and support the possibility that ethanol-derived acetaldehyde may be responsible for some aspects of tissue damage in chronic alcoholics, including the increase in the mean cell volume of erythrocytes. Three of the four cell lines studied showed a reduction and the fourth showed no change in modal cell volume after culture with 100 mM ethanol, suggesting that the macrocytosis of red cells induced by chronic alcoholism is not caused via some direct effect of ethanol on the erythron.