Coronavirus: is it not recommended to consume alcohol after receiving the vaccine?

NEW YORK.- After an eternal year and so many expectations, getting the vaccine seems like more than a valid reason to celebrate, which for many can mean pouring a drink and a toast to your brand new immunity to Covid-19 . And there is the doubt: Can alcohol interfere with our body’s immune response?

The short answer is it depends on how much alcohol we are talking about..

There is no evidence that drinking a drink or two can deactivate or decrease the effectiveness of current coronavirus vaccines. Some studies even suggest that in the long term, low or moderate alcohol consumption may benefit the immune system by reducing inflammation.

Heavy alcohol consumption, on the other hand, and especially if it is prolonged over time, can suppress the immune system and even potentially interfere with the response to the vaccine.experts say. Since it can take weeks between getting vaccinated and when the body is generating a sufficient level of antibodies to protect us from the novel coronavirus, we need to be careful of anything that interferes with the body’s immune response.

“If you drink in moderation, there is really no risk of having a drink around the date of your vaccination,” he says. Ilhem Messaoudi, director of the Virus Research Center at the University of California, who led a investigation on the effects of alcohol on the body’s immune response. “You have to be very aware of what it means to drink moderately. It is dangerous to consume large amounts of alcohol because of the effects on all biological systems, including the immune system, which can become severe and occur quickly after going beyond the moderation zone ”.

Moderate consumption is generally considered to be no more than two drinks per day for men and one drink for women., while high consumption is four drinks for men and three for women. It should be remembered that the drinks considered “standard” are 150 ml of wine, 44 ml of distilled drink and 355 ml of beer.

The first concerns about the relationship between alcohol and Covid-19 began to circulate in December, when Russian health official advised to avoid alcohol two weeks before getting vaccinated and to abstain another 42 days later. According to a newspaper article, the official said that alcohol can inhibit the body’s ability to develop immunity. His warning crippled the country: Russia’s alcohol consumption rate is one of the highest in the world.

In the United States, some experts say they have heard similar concerns about alcohol consumption during vaccination. “A lot of people ask that”, says the doctor Angela Hewlett, Associate Professor of Communicable Diseases at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. “It is understandable that those who get vaccinated want to be sure that they are not conspiring against their body’s immune response.”.

Hewlett notes that clinical trials of vaccines currently approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have not specifically examined the impact of alcohol on vaccine effectiveness. We may have more data in the future, but for now, most of what is known is from previous research, including studies that have investigated the effects of alcohol on the immune system in the body. humans and whether it interferes with the immune response in animals. Who have received others. vaccinations.

Studies clearly show that excessive alcohol consumption affects the immune response and increases your vulnerability to bacterial and viral infections.. It prevents immune cells from migrating to the site of infection and performing their functions, such as destroying viruses, bacteria and infected cells. It also allows pathogens to invade cells more easily and leads to other types of complications.

On the contrary, drinking in moderation does not seem to have the same effect. In one study, scientists exposed 391 people to five different respiratory viruses and found that moderate drinkers were less likely to develop a cold, but not if they were smokers.

In another study, Messaoudi and his colleagues gave a group of rhesus monkeys access to alcoholic beverages. for seven months, and then they watched how their body responded to a poxvirus vaccine. Like humans, some rhesus monkeys like alcohol and drink heavily, while others show less interest and limit themselves to small amounts. Researchers found that chronically heavy drinking animals had poor vaccine response. “His immune response was almost nonexistent,” Messaoudi says.

However, animals that consumed only moderate amounts of alcohol generated a better immune response after receiving the vaccine, even compared to abstainers who had consumed nothing at all. Studies in rats have revealed a similar pattern: Those who drink a lot of alcohol have a poor immune response to infections, compared to those who get little or no alcohol. Other studies have shown that when people drink moderately, they seem to decrease inflammatory indicators in their blood..

Another reason to be careful with alcohol consumption consists of drinking excessively, with the hangover that followed, may make side effects of the vaccine, such as fever, discomfort or body aches, worse and make the person feel worsesays Hewlett of the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Hewlett has decided not to drink after receiving the vaccine, but says people can feel free to drink as long as they are drinking within reason.

“Most likely, having a glass of champagne doesn’t suppress the immune response at all,” he says. “To take moderately to celebrate is good.”

Translation of Jaime Arrambide

The New York Times