[pronut-hiv] Uganda [opinion]: Alcohol Makes Mouth Cells Susceptible to HIV Infection

["ProNut-HIV" <pronut-hiv@healthnet.org>]

Uganda [opinion]: Alcohol Makes Mouth Cells Susceptible to HIV
Infection
New Vision (Kampala)

OPINION
March 15, 2006 
Oscar Bamuhigire
Kampala 

A couple of years ago, three of my colleagues at Namasagali University
died of hiv/AIDS. They had used condoms most of the time, but drunk a
lot of alcohol.

It is then that I knew there was a link between alcoholism and
HIV/AIDS. Recent scientific findings at the University of California,
Los Angeles (UCLA) revealed that beer might cause the cells that line
your mouth to become more vulnerable to HIV.

Previous studies had always focused on how alcohol made people more
vulnerable to irresponsible sexual behaviour, but these findings throw
new light on the role of alcohol in facilitating the spread of
HIV/AIDS.

The study, titled Ethanol Stimulation of HIV Infection of Oral
Epithelial Cells, reports that exposure to four percent alcohol, a
common amount for most beers, can weaken mouth cells.

The report was published recently in the Journal of Acquired Immune
Deficiency Syndromes.

The findings were determined in a lab setting. Scientists took mouth
cells and placed them in a petri dish, soaking them in ethanol between
zero and four percent for 10 minutes.

The cells exposed to the four percent alcohol showed they were up to
six times as likely to contract the HIV strain used in the experiment.

These findings shocked many HIV research scientists. UCLA reported they
took oral epithelial cells (the type of cells that line the interior of
the mouth) and exposed them to alcohol for up to 10 minutes before
inserting a fluorescent HIV strain to make the transmissions visible.

Dr. Shen Pang working with the UCLA Dental Institute, one of the
researchers, said the cells were obtained from leftover cell samples
taken between 1994-1996 from a number of HIV-negative people.

The cells used were taken from healthy mouths and did not take into
account such things as mouth sores.

The alcohol used was on 200% lab-based ethanol that was diluted to four
percent for use in the study. "Most beer is between three and five
percent, that is why we use the four percent," Pang said.

According to, Nabila Wassef, the programme officer with the National
Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases Division of AIDS at the
National Institutes of Health in Maryland, alcohol would inactivate the
virus.

He said the oral epithelial cells were used because they are CD-4
negative, which is a protein present in T-cells. HIV strains often bind
themselves to the CD-4 proteins to get into T-cells.