A recent study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center shows that even moderately heavy consumption of alcohol can trigger free-radical damage to the body. According to Dr. Garrett A. FitzGerald, the chairman of pharmacology and director of the Center for Experimental Therapeutics who served as senior author of the study, the kind of alcohol consumption that often occurs in social settings sets off “damaging pro-oxidant processes,” which have been “implicated in a number of illnesses, including diseases of the liver and the cardiovascular system.”
When healthy volunteers were given enough alcohol to raise their blood-alcohol levels to .08, .10 and .13 respectively, a biochemical marker of oxidant stress showed increases of 69 percent, 289 percent and 345 percent respectively. (In most states, the legal limit for driving is a blood-alcohol level of either .08 or .10.) Patients admitted to emergency rooms with acute alcohol-induced liver disease had oxidant-stress levels that were approximately 50 times higher than normal. When patients with chronic alcohol-related disease were given 2,500 milligrams of vitamin C for 10 days, that same biochemical marker was reduced by about 50 percent.
The study appeared in the Sept. 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
