Drinking increases HIV susceptibility.

Even small amounts of alcohol could increase a person's susceptibility to the HIV virus, according to preliminary research by Andre Kajdacy Balla, assistant professor of pathology, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, in collaboration with Omar Bagasra of Thomas Jefferson Medical College and Harold Lischner of Temple University. In the two-year study, blood was drawn from healthy volunteers who had been screened to determine that they were not alcohol- or drug-dependent. Blood was drawn on Mondays, after the participants had been instructed to drink alcohol - in whatever amount they preferred - during the weekend. Some had only one drink, while others consumed several. Most often, the subjects drank beer, wine coolers, or a mixture of two or more types of alcoholic beverages.

In the laboratory, the participants' blood was mixed with the HIV virus, and its susceptibility to infection in the test tube was studied. "What we found suggests that even a small dose of alcohol could decrease resistance to the HIV virus, and also could decrease the space of time between infection and the development of full-blown AIDS," Balla explains. "There has been some previous epidemiological studies to investigate this using human blood. But our study is the most forceful evidence to date which shows that alcohol does...