Alcohol y metabolismo humano

Abstract

One of the objectives of this present work is to carry out an up-to-date and summarised review of the most relevant aspects of alcohol absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion processes. Although there are significant individual variations, alcohol is, in the main, absorbed at an intestinal level distributed by the organism in an analogous way to that of body water and most of it is metabolised. Given that the basic biotransformation of ethanol is produced by means of an oxidative enzymatic metabolism, we have set aside a section to analyse insofar as possible- the enzymatic systems responsible for such oxidisation. In addition, in this chapter, we would like to provide a summary of the data available on the involvement of acetaldehyde, primary metabolic oxidative, in the effects of alcohol. Said involvement is not limited, as was hitherto believed, to the toxic effects derived from alcohol consumption. On the contrary, there is an increasingly solid body of experimental knowledge that associates acetaldehyde with the euphoric effects of alcohol and, consequently, with the ability of this drug to establish a pattern of repeated consumption. Finally, there is a review of the interactions that can occur between the metabolism of alcohol and the biotransformation of other substances. These interactions may always lead to endogenous or exogenous substances sharing the same enzymatic systems with ethanol. In this sense, the induction of the P-450 2E1 and other P-450 cytochromes in hepatic cells, provoked by the chronic consumption of alcohol, merits particular attention.