In the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics, scientists report on experiments in which beverage alcohol made several medications more readily available to the body and essentially multiplied the original dose.
According to Christel Bergström and colleagues, alcohol, or ethanol, can cause an increase in the amount of nonprescription and prescription drugs that are “available” to the body. Alcohol can affect the way enzymes and other substances in the body relate with medications. Some of these drugs don’t dissolve well in the gastrointestinal tract. However, researchers hypothesized that ethanol would make these medications dissolve more easily and, in return, make the medications more available to the body. Greater availability would intensify the medications’ effects on the body.
To test their hypothesis, scientists used a simulated environment of the small intestine and tested the speed with which medications dissolved when alcohol was and was not present. Almost 60% of the 22 medications tested dissolved much faster in the presence of alcohol. In addition, scientists determined that more acidic medications were more affected. Some common acidic drugs include warfarin, the anticoagulant; tamoxifen, used to treat certain forms of cancer; and naproxen, which relieves pain and inflammation.
Source: ACS.