Alcohol as a cure for infections

Biologists found in fruit flies
self-medication with alcohol

Konstantin Bolotov, Membrane,
based on LiveScience (Flies Get Drunk to Kill Off Parasites)
and Emory University (Fruit flies use alcohol as a drug to kill parasites).

"We believe that our results are the first evidence that alcohol consumption can have a protective effect against infectious diseases and, in particular, blood–borne parasites," says study leader Todd Schlenke.

"It is possible that fruit flies have uniquely adapted to the use of alcohol for treatment. But our data raise an important question – can other organisms, perhaps even humans, control the development of parasites due to large doses of alcohol?" – asks the scientist.

According to LiveScience, American biologists from Emory University experimented with the black-bellied drosophila (Drosophila melanogaster). The larvae of these flies feed on fungi and bacteria from rotten fruits.

"Basically, they're living on a binge," explains Todd A. Schlenke. – The amount of alcohol in their natural habitat can vary from 5 to 15 percent. Imagine that your entire daily diet of food and drink consists of 5% alcohol. We couldn't live like this, and fruit flies have a good detoxification mechanism."

Perhaps the main enemies of fruit flies are wasps, which lay their eggs in the larvae of flies. The endoparasite is injected together with a poison that suppresses the immune system. If the poison is effective enough, a larva hatches from the wasp's egg and begins to devour the future fruit fly from the inside. As a result, an adult wasp is selected from the remains of the fly pupa.

Wasps in pupae of drosophila larvae eaten from the inside (photo by Todd Schlenke).

However, some fruit flies can resist wasp venom and fight wasp eggs with an immune reaction. The blood cells of these flies emit chemicals that kill eggs.

"There is an ongoing evolutionary battle between the immune system of flies and wasp venom. Any new defense mechanism of fruit flies, as a rule, is spread by natural selection," comments Todd Schlenke, who suggested that alcohol may be such a defense for D. melanogaster.

To test the theory, the researchers filled a Petri dish with yeast. On one side of the saucer, scientists mixed 6% alcohol, and on the other - not, after which they released fruit fly larvae into the cups and allowed them to move freely in any direction.

After 24 hours, 80% of the larvae infected with wasps turned out to be on the "alcoholic side" of the saucer, while only 30% were uninfected in this kind of bar.

"It seems that infected fruit flies intentionally consume alcohol, because they see in it a higher chance of survival," explains the biologist. According to him, infected flies that took alcohol were treated with endoparasites in about 60% of cases, while the survival rate of fruit flies that ate non-alcoholic yeast was 0%.

Meanwhile, those few wasps that attacked the "alcohol-soaked" larvae were waiting for a terrible death. "In many cases, the internal organs of the wasp fell out of her anus," says Schlenke. "The wasps were turned inside out."

The article Alcohol Consumption as Self-Medication against Blood-Borne Parasites in the Fruit Fly (Alcohol consumption as self-medication for blood-borne parasites in the fruit fly) is published in Current Biology.

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20.02.2012