The first microarray datasets from human postmortem brain tissue from alcoholics reveal an upregulation in immune-related genes compared with age-matched healthy controls (Lewohl et al., 2000; Liu et al., 2006; Mayfield et al., 2002). Subsequent brain transcriptome studies from rodents treated with chronic ethanol show altered expression of genes related to glial or immune function (McBride et al., 2013; Osterndorff-Kahanek et al., 2013, 2015; Saba et al., 2015). In addition to changes in brain gene expression, cytokine and chemokine levels in serum and striatum increase following chronic voluntary ethanol consumption in mice (Pascual et al., 2015). In monkeys, chronic ethanol consumption alters hippocampal levels of the inflammatory cytokine MCP-1 (Beattie et al., 2018). Ethanol exposure alters mRNA levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-6, and CCL2) in a sex-, brain region-, and time-dependent manner (Baxter-Potter et al., 2017). In general, females may be more sensitive to ethanol-induced neuroimmune responses (Alfonso-Loeches et al., 2013; Bala et al., 2014; Barton et al., 2017; Baxter-Potter et al., 2017; Pascual et al., 2017; Wilhelm et al., 2015). Age is also a factor in susceptibility to
