Clinical Characteristics and Survival Analysis in Frequent Alcohol Consumers With COVID-19

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.

Alcohol Use and the Risk of Communicable Diseases

“…Studies on the association between alcohol use and the incidence and severity of COVID-19 have yielded mixed results. While some studies have found associations, in particular for heavy drinkers [178][179][180] or people with AUDs [181], other studies have demonstrated that alcohol use per se was not necessarily associated with the incidence of COVID-19 or with a more severe course of the disease [182][183][184]. This is in line with the postulated pathways described above, which mainly report effects for heavy drinking and/or in people with AUDs (see also [185][186][187]).…”

Risk Factors of Severe COVID-19: A Review of Host, Viral and Environmental Factors

“…High consumption of alcohol has been linked to adverse health effects, including an exacerbation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection and other sources of ARDS [ 771 , 772 ]. While some early reports failed to find a significant effect of alcohol consumption on COVID-19 severity [ 773 , 774 , 775 ], excess alcohol intake has since been repeatedly associated with worse clinical outcomes, such as severe disease [ 776 ], ARDS [ 777 ] and death [ 778 ]. A latent causal variable analysis that considered also genetic correlations using GWAS data also confirmed the link between alcohol consumption and severe COVID-19 [ 779 ].…”

Influencing factors of anxiety and depression of discharged COVID-19 patients in Wuhan, China

“…However, while certain amount of alcohol use might improve individual’s mental health to some extent, this did not apply to binge drinking, since binge drinking could harm mental health in the long term [ 74 – 76 ]. Moreover, alcohol consumption may increase pro-inflammatory markers and the mortality risk due to COVID-19-associated complications in RD [ 77 ]. Hence, although the present study suggested possible benefits of alcohol, public health agencies should remind RD of the long-term effects of drinking on mental health, and the importance of avoiding binge drinking.…”