Binge drinking rapidly triggers asthma‐like pulmonary inflammation in cockroach‐allergen sensitized mice

Asthma and binge drinking represent two significant public health issues and many asthmatic patients report exacerbation within 15 minutes of drinking. In the current study mice were sensitized to cockroach allergen (CRA) and then gavaged with water or 32% ethanol 7 days after the last allergen exposure. Mice were sacrificed 30 minutes post gavage for all parameters except airways hyperreactivity (AHR), which was analyzed 1 hour post gavage. Four groups were studied: Normal (naïve), Baseline (2 CRA challenges, no gavage), Water and Ethanol (2 CRA challenges, gavage). Data were z‐score transformed into a heatmap and for all parameters the Ethanol dataset shows statistically significant increases when compared to Water dataset (p‐values in parentheses, Figure 1). Within 30 minutes of ethanol gavage there is a 4‐fold increase in mucin production in airway epithelial cells, a 10‐fold increase in lung eotaxin‐2, a doubling of alveolar eosinophil infiltrate, and an increase in mast cell degranulation (tryptase) as seen in z‐score comparisons in Figure 1. Ethanol exacerbated airways hyperreactivity, as measured by lenthened inspiratory times (Figure 1) and a 4 fold increase in enhanced pause (PenH, Figure 2). Ethanol did not exacerbate any parameters in naïve mice. Our data show that even in the absence of concurrent allergen stimulus oral alcohol will exacerbate asthma. Supported by R01ES013538.