High Alcohol Intake Increases Chances Of Having Tuberculosis

“Alcohol affects a lot of factors within the system. If somebody has TB, already the immune system is down because of that disease. Excessive alcohol consumption will only worsen the condition and so it can lead to other mortalities or severe complications.”

President of the Nigeria Thoracic Society, NTS, Professor Etete Peters, has cautioned against high intake of alcohol because it can lower body’s defence against infection, including tuberculosis (TB).

Professor Peters said that heavy alcohol use was a major contributor to the tuberculosis burden of disease control, adding that alcohol-attributable tuberculosis incidence had increased in most high tuberculosis burden countries.

According to him, alcohol consumption impacts tuberculosis treatment compliance, leading to subsequently acquired drug resistance.

He declared: “alcohol affects a lot of factors within the system. If somebody has TB, already the immune system is down because of that disease. Excessive alcohol consumption will only worsen the condition and so it can lead to other mortalities or severe complications.

“There are so many complications that can set in either through the lungs or outside the lungs. So, what can cause mortality can be within the lungs or outside the lungs.

“A patient diagnosed with TB is usually advised to stay off alcohol, especially while on that medication, until he has completed the long-term treatment, then he can go back to such a practice.”

Even where the TB is latent and the person drinks alcohol, Professor Peters said the presence of diseases like diabetes, HIV and hypertension can reactivate such a latent TB case and in the presence of alcohol do more harm.

He declared: “Latent TB requires something to reactivate it such as HIV or diabetes. The disease lowers the body’s immunity. And in such a situation, alcohol intake will further hype the effect of such disease that activates the latent TB.”

Previously, researchers, in a 2017 study published in the European Respiratory Journal, had warned that alcohol consumption was a major contributor to the tuberculosis burden of disease, particularly in the African region.

Another study estimated that alcohol consumption was responsible for approximately 10 per cent of all cases and deaths due to tuberculosis.

They, therefore, suggested that alcohol control policies have an instrumental role to play in the global strategy for tuberculosis control.

TB happens to be the unprecedented world’s most infectious deadly killer with about 4,500 lives lost per day and unfortunately, Nigeria is far worse hit by this global epidemic in Africa.

According to WHO, Nigeria currently ranks seventh in the world and second in Africa among the 30 countries with the highest burden of TB, TB/HIV and multi-drug resistant TB.

Significant progress has been made in the fight against tuberculosis, but it continues to be a life-threatening disease that is worsened by many challenges responsible for its prevalence.