A large amount of alcohol can wreak havoc on the immune system, says Majid Afshar from Loyola University basing on his long-term practice.

Afshar works with trauma patients. He decided to find out whether alcohol can impact on the immune system of patients, maybe speeding the recovery process. Volunteers were asked to down 4 or 5 shots of vodka within 20 minutes. Then they took blood samples from the participants over the next few hours, New Scientist reports.

The scientist isolated immune cells from the samples, presented them with proteins found on potentially harmful bacteria. Then he measured immune response and found out that at first, the immune system ramps up, but within a few hours there is an anti-inflammatory phase during which its responses are weakened.

The researcher thinks doctors should take this into account while treating people with alcoholism.