Alcohol and pathologies of the gastrointestinal tract, liver and pancreas

Currently alcohol-related pathologies represent an important cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. In Europe, 55 million people are consumers at risk of ethanol and 23 million people are addicted to alcohol. More and more people consume alcohol at an increasingly early age. Indeed, the excessive alcohol absorption, particularly binge drinking, among young people is increasing. Binge drinking is an independent risk factor for alcohol-induced damage; other risk factors for alcohol-induced damage are: amount of ingested alcohol, type of beverageconsumed, age, gender, genetic structure and other liver diseases (hepatitis B and C, hemochromatosis, Wilson’s disease, etc). Ethanol abuse produces damage in different apparatus; in particular digestive system is one of the apparatus that mainly conveys the negative effects deriving from ethanol abuse through: direct action, interference with absorption and metabolism of nutrients, modifications of intestinal microbial flora, endogenous production by bacterial metabolism. In this review, we analyzed the capacity of ethanol, excessively consumed, in inducing different diseases of digestive system, taking into consideration the single organs: esophagus, stomach, small intestine, colon-rectum, pancreas and liver. However, moderate ethanol consumption has been demonstrated to be protective for different diseases of digestive system, especially red wine. This effect is probably mediated by the high concentration of natural antioxidants contained in this type of alcoholic beverage. In closing, it is important to highlight the lack of recent Italian and European data about the epidemiology of alcohol consumption, as well as the lack of studies about alcohol-induced acute pathologies and the effect deriving from moderate long-term use of ethanol.