Macaca mulatta Transcriptome or Gene expression

It has been well established that heavy alcohol consumption affects the immune system and inflammatory processes. The detrimental effects of chronic alcohol consumption include liver damage, cardiovascular disease and increased susceptibility to bacterial and viral infections resulting in overall increased mortality. These increased vulnerabilities have been attributed to altered immune regulation, which leads to defective host defense and increased inflammation. However, the exact molecular mechanisms explaining these differences in a dose and gender dependent manner are yet to be fully understood. In this study, we leveraged a nonhuman primate model of voluntary self-administration. In this model, macaques are trained to self-administer alcohol using a schedule-induced polydipsia during an induction period, after which the macaques have access to both alcohol and water for 22 h/day. The animals, thus segregate naturally as heavy and moderate drinkers within 2-3 months and these patterns remain stable. For the cohort of 9 macaques used in this study, we had 6 macaques segregate as heavy drinkers with average alcohol content of 4.2 g/kg/day and the rest establishing as the control group. Surprisingly, we saw no female macaques segregating into a moderate drinking group. We examined the impact of chronic heavy alcohol exposure on immune cell numbers and overall gene expression changes in peripheral blood mononuclear cells collected from these two groups.