If alcohol is an immunosuppressant, and your testing for an antibody, like say for an std or other disease, doctors say unless you’re chronically immunosuppressed you’ll be positive. But if you’re drinking a lot out of anxiety, and you take the test and it’s negative, can’t alcohol suppress the immune system enough to cause the false negative? Or is it just due to the extent of say HIV or an immunosuppressant drug is WAYYY more suppressing than alcohol.
In: 7
Would alcohol suppress your immune system… I guess…
But:
1. The alcohol gets processed in your liver and filtered out by your kidneys. (So it’s effects, *and so, it’s immunosuppressive effects* wear off over time and eventually go away.)
2. Typically when people are on immunosuppressants (like, pills, not like alcohol) it’s meant as daily use for years and years and years. (Not that people don’t drink most days. But the cumulative effects of daily immunosuppressants is way, way more, long term, than alcohol.
3. Regardless of 1 and 2 anyway, antibody tests detect antibodies. Assuming you’ve already naturally gotten whatever disease the antibody is for (or you got a vaccine, say, and so have antibodies acquired from a vaccine, or even in utero) so, if you’ve gotten antibodies somehow, your body is still using those specific B cells to make those antibodies. (Maybe even still, alcohol might suppress *the amount
* of antibody made, but *you still have the cells that make them*, *so they’re still there, even if maybe in less concentration for a short amount of time, which again, would be only for a short time anyhow, then raise back up again*…
Latest Answers