Alcohol modulation of human normal T-cell activation, maturation, and migration.

We are interested in the characterization of the effects of alcohol on human T-cell activation, maturation, and migration, because this cell population is crucial in the initiation, regulation, and propagation of cellular immunity. We and others have described the effects of both acute and chronic exposure of human immune cells to ethanol (EtOH) in vitro. Herein, we briefly, review these reports and expand this body of literature with the inclusion of new data recently obtained in our laboratory. We confirm the blunting effects of EtOH on the production of interleukin-2 and mitogen proliferative response following T-cell mitogen stimulation, and on the expression of membrane markers of activation. We show that EtOH significantly alters the expression of the CD4 cell-associated marker of activation, CD26. We report the effect of EtOH on the expression of the homing receptor CD62L by CD4+ cells, and on their ability to adhere by a CD18-mediated process to a defined cellular substratum. Furthermore, we demonstrate the effects of EtOH and EtOH and beta-endorphin pretreatment on the activation of CD4+ lymphocytes endowed with the homing receptor CD62L.