Abstract
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection can generate a systemic disease named coronavirus disease–2019 (COVID-19). Currently, the COVID-19 pandemic has killed millions worldwide, presenting huge health and economic challenges worldwide. Several risk factors, such as age, co-infections, metabolic syndrome, and smoking have been associated with poor disease progression and outcomes. Alcohol drinking is a common social practice among adults, but frequent and/or excessive consumption can mitigate the anti-viral and anti-bacterial immune responses. Therefore, we investigated if patients with self-reported daily alcohol consumption (DAC) presented alteration in the immune response to SARS-CoV-2. We investigated 122 patients with COVID-19 (101 male and 46 females), in which 23 were patients with DAC (18 men and 5 women) and 99 were non-DAC patients (58 men and 41 women), without other infections, neoplasia, or immunodeficiencies. Although with no difference in age, patients with DAC presented an increase in severity-associated COVID-19 markers such as C-reactive protein (CRP), neutrophil count, and neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio. In addition, patients with DAC presented a reduction in the lymphocytes and monocytes counts. Importantly, the DAC group presented an increase in death rate in comparison with the non-DAC group. Our results demonstrated that, in our cohort, DAC enhanced COVID-19-associated inflammation, and increased the number of deaths due to COVID-19.
Highlights
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection can generate a severe systemic and multi-organ disease named coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19)
The use of substances such as tobacco smoking is an established risk factor for severe COVID-19 [12], but few reports have identified people with alcohol use disorder or daily alcohol consumption (DAC) in their cohorts, with reports identifying no influence on neither drinking alcohol on severity nor death rates in patients with COVID-19 [13, 14]
The Patients with non-DAC and DAC did not present any age difference or significant statistical differences in the levels of alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, alkaline phosphatase, total bilirubin, direct bilirubin, indirect bilirubin, glutamyl transferase gamma, creatinine, lactate dehydrogenase, total protein and fractions, albumin, globulin, urea, and Ddimer, prothrombin time (Table 1). Both nonDAC and DAC presented alterations in alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, direct bilirubin, glutamyl transferase gamma, creatinine, lactate dehydrogenase, C-reactive protein (CRP), urea, D-dimer, and the prothrombin time were outside the considered normal range (Table 1)
Summary
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection can generate a severe systemic and multi-organ disease named coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). SARS-CoV-2 has infected and killed millions worldwide [1]. Several risk factors, such as co-infections [2], old age, chronic respiratory diseases, and comorbidities [3] have been associated with poor outcomes of COVID-19. The use of substances such as tobacco smoking is an established risk factor for severe COVID-19 [12], but few reports have identified people with alcohol use disorder or daily alcohol consumption (DAC) in their cohorts, with reports identifying no influence on neither drinking alcohol on severity nor death rates in patients with COVID-19 [13, 14]. We aimed to perform an investigation in our cohort to assess if DAC could influence the disease course and outcome of COVID-19
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