Similarly, it is not known whether peripheral inflammation is required to initiate neuroinflammation in AUD. Alcohol may induce neuroinflammation through direct effects on the brain. Inflammatory responses to ethanol are seen in brain slices (Coleman et al., 2017; Tajuddin et al., 2018; Zou and Crews, 2010, 2014), astrocytes (Alfonso-Loeches et al., 2010), and microglia (Fernandez-Lizarbe et al., 2009, 2013), suggesting that gut permeability and systemic activation of immune responses are not solely responsible for alcohol’s neuroinflammatory effects. It’s possible that immune responses are also initiated locally in the CNS in response to alcohol-induced neuronal damage (Collins and Neafsey, 2016; Cservenka and Brumback, 2017; de la Monte and Kril, 2014).
