HealthMED - Volume 7 / Number 8 / 2013 Journal of Society for development in new net environment in B&H 2445 Abstract Considering that ethanol caused number of health problems in the world , the present study was initiated to investigate the histological haz- ardous effects of ethanol on the liver and spleen. Animals were divided into 4 groups, the irst group served as a control group, the second, third and fourth received 1,2 and 6 ml/kg/bw of 70% ethanol respectively. At the day 5 post treatment, the liver and spleen sections were prepared for the histological study. Ethanol intake induced marked histological alterations in the liver and spleen that correlated with the dose taken, low dose induced liver and spleen injury mainly as cytoplasmic degeneration in liver and abnormal structure of spleen, whereas, high doses of ethanol resulted in ibrosis in liver and splenomegaly. Key words: Ethanol, mice, liver, spleen. Introduction Ethanol has been a part of the human diet for centuries. However, its consumption in excess can result in a number of health problems, most nota- bly liver damage , Ethanol cannot be excreted and must be metabolized, primarily by the liver (Berg et al., 2002). Alcoholic Liver Disease (ALD) is a blanket term in which conditions related specii- cally to the liver and alcohol use fall under. The most prevalent types of Alcoholic Liver Disease, or ALD, are fatty liver, alcoholic hepatitis, and cir- rhosis. Often, as people continue to drink heavily, they progress from fatty liver to hepatitis to cirrho- sis. All three of the disorders can occur together ( Robert et al., 2004). Fatty Liver, which occurs af- ter acute alcohol ingestion, is generally reversible with abstinence and is not thought to predispose to any chronic form of liver disease if abstinence and/ or moderation are maintained (Kyrsten, 2004). It is estimated by the National Institutes of Health that about 20 percent of alcoholics and heavy drinkers develop fatty liver, or steatosis (Robert et al., 2004). Other sources estimate that 90-100 per- cent of patients with heavy drinking will develop this disease (Ismail and Riely, 2006). The condi- tion can lead to death if alcohol consumption is not reduced or stopped, Alcohol can be a factor in several other forms of liver disease not speciical- ly attributed to it, and may interact with risk fac- tors for other forms of liver disease . An example of this is people with alcohol-related cirrhosis are at a higher risk of developing liver cancer. Those with Hepatitis B or C accompanied with heavy drinking are at a much higher risk of cirrhosis than with heavy drinking alone (Robert et al., 2004). Clinical evidence supports a correlation between excessive alcohol consumption and certain bacte- rial infections. For example, alcoholics who have developed cirrhosis of the liver are predisposed to spontaneous bacterial peritonitis. Phagocytes are an important defense against infection in this part of the body and defects in phagocytic cell func- tion, observed in many alcoholics, may predispose these individual to peritoneal infection (Roselle, 1992). There is considerable evidence indicating that ethanol consumption alters immune system function and leads to increased susceptibility to infections and neoplastic diseases (Nath and Sza- bo, 2009; Lau et al., 2009; Nava‐Aguilera et al., 2009; Szabo and Mandrekar, 2009). Materials and Methods Animals and experimental design Male swiss mice weighed 25 to 30 g were ob- tained from King Saoud university animal house. Mice were provided with water and balanced diet ad libitum. 20 adult swiss mice were randomly di- vided into 4 groups of 5 mice in each as following: Histological study on the hazardous efects of ethanol on liver and spleen in Swiss albino mice Badr Abdullah Aldahmash 1 , Doaa Mohamed El-Nagar 2 1 Medical Laboratory Department, College of Health Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 2 Faculty of Sciences and Humanities, University of Salman bin Abdul Aziz, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.