Alcoholism has a pronounced effect on people's mental and physical health. Glutamate dehydrogenase (GLDH) is a linking factor in metabolism of carbohydrates and proteins. It is an enzyme of mitochondrial matrix, but it is also found in rough endoplasmic reticulum. There is few relevant data about the role of GLDH in leukocytes and the effect of alcohol on leukocytes so far.

The aim of our study was to define GLDH activity in leukocytes under and after alcohol consumption, what can give us indirect data about protein metabolism in leukocytes.

We developed our own method to define GLDH activity and established our own reference activities for GLDH in leukocytes which were from 0.05 - 1.17 μkat/g protein.

Our research has been done on 142 healthy subjects and 113 alcoholics having consumed alcohol within last 48 hours.

Mean catalytic activity in healthy subjects was 0.5649 μkat/g protein. Mean catalytic GLDH activity in alcoholics increased from 0.5042 μkat/g to 0.6696 μkat/g after 24 - 48 hours to 0.6974 μkat/g after 48 - 72 hours of abstinence. We found a statistically significant increase (p = 0.012) in GLDH activity after 48-72 hours of abstinence.

It is possible to conclude that under the influence of alcohol the leukocyte GLDH activity in alcoholics is lower than in healthy subjects. Cessation of alcohol consumption has resulted in a statistically significant increase in leukocytes GDLH activity. Therefore, alcohol consumption results in reduction in GLDH activity as well as protein production and consecutively leads to diminished leukocytes protective ability.