Any observed benefit likely stems from other lifestyle factors common among light to moderate alcohol drinkers, the researchers say. Observational research has suggested that light alcohol consumption may provide heart-related health benefits, but in a large study published on the JAMA Network Open, alcohol intake at all levels was linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
The resultspublished by a team led by researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, suggest that the purported benefits of alcohol consumption may actually be attributed to other lifestyle factors that are common among casual drinkers and heavy drinkers. moderate.
The study included 371,463 adults, with an average age of 57 and an average alcohol consumption of 9.2 drinks per week, who were participants in the UK biobank, a large-scale biomedical database and a research resource containing genetic information. and in-depth health care.
Consistent with previous studies, the researchers found that light to moderate drinkers had the lowest risk of heart disease, followed by people who abstained from drinking. People who drank heavily had the highest risk. However, the team also found that light to moderate drinkers tended to have healthier lifestyles compared to abstainers, such as more physical activity and vegetable intake and less smoking.
Alcohol: the bias
Taking only a few lifestyle factors into consideration significantly reduced any benefits associated with alcohol consumption. The study also applied the latest techniques in a method called Mendelian randomization, which uses genetic variants to determine whether an observed link between an exposure and an outcome is consistent. with a causal effectin this case, if light alcohol consumption causes a person to be protected against cardiovascular disease.
“The latest and most advanced techniques in ‘non-linear Mendelian randomization’ now allow the use of human genetic data to assess the direction and magnitude of disease risk associated with different levels of exposure,” says senior author Krishna G .
Aragam, MD, MS, cardiologist at MGH and associate scientist at the Broad Institute. “We then exploited these new techniques and the extensive genetic and phenotypic data of biobank populations to better understand the association between habitual alcohol intake and cardiovascular disease.”
When the scientists conducted such genetic analyzes on samples taken from the participants, they found that individuals with genetic variants that predicted higher alcohol consumption were actually more likely to consume more alcohol and more likely to have hypertension and coronary heart disease.
Analyzes also revealed substantial differences in cardiovascular risk across the full spectrum of alcohol consumption between men and women, with minimal increases in risk when going from zero to seven drinks per week, much higher risk increases when moving from seven. at 14 drinks per week, and particularly high-risk when consuming 21 or more drinks per week.
In particular, the results suggest an increase in cardiovascular risk even at levels deemed “low risk” by the national guidelines of the United States Department of Agriculture (i.e. below two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women).
The finding that the relationship between alcohol intake and cardiovascular risk is not linear but rather exponential was supported by further analysis of data on 30,716 participants at the Mass General Brigham Biobank. Therefore, while reducing consumption it can also benefit people who drink one alcoholic beverage a daythe health gains from the reduction may be more substantial, and perhaps clinically significant, in those who consume the most.
The findings state that alcohol intake should not be recommended for improving cardiovascular health; rather, that reducing alcohol intake will likely reduce cardiovascular risk in all individuals, albeit to varying degrees based on their current level of consumption, ”says Aragam.
Especially in the United States it has become an increasingly concrete risk, given the increase in alcohol consumption among the very young, and which can lead to consequences increasingly serious in the long run.
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