As described above, in vivo ethanol ingestion of 6.3% (v/v) in the form of a standard Lieber-DeCarli liquid diet (a widely used rodent model of chronic and binge ethanol ad libitum feeding (Bertola, Mathews et al. 2013)) for 4 weeks in male mice up-regulated NFκB activation and increased circulating levels of IL-6 and TNF-α in response to TLR4 ligand LPS stimulation (Maraslioglu, Oppermann et al. 2014). Male rats on a liquid diet with 35% of calories coming from ethanol also showed enhanced mRNA half-life and protein expression of LPS-induced TNF-α by increasing TNF-α in liver monocytes/macrophages (Kishore, McMullen et al. 2001). In humans, peripheral blood monocytes isolated from 16 hospitalized male patients with alcoholic hepatitis (but no detectable blood alcohol levels at the time of blood collection) had significantly increased TNF-α production in response to LPS stimulation when compared to monocytes from healthy volunteers (McClain and Cohen 1989).
