Thursday, February 24, 2011

Cheers! Let's Drink for Heart Disease!

Cheers!  A votre sante!  Gam bai!  Two studies were just published yesterday in the British Medical Journal adding to the evidence that alcohol is beneficial in heart disease.

In the first systematic review & meta-analysis, the authors filtered through 4,690 studies to read 124 full articles from which 63 were selected but only 44 had data on the desired biomarkers.  Of those evaluated, the authors concluded that moderate alcohol consumption led to statistically significant beneficial effects on HDL (good cholesterol), apolipoprotein A1, adiponectin & fibrinogen, which may explain alcohol's cardioprotective effect.

In the second systematic review & meta-analysis, another group of authors sifted through 4,235 studies from which they culled just 84 for inclusion.  Their conclusions?  Alcohol consumption lowered cardiovascular mortality by 25%, incident coronary heart disease by 29%, coronary heart disease mortality by 25%, and all-cause mortality by 13% compared to tee-totalers.  Incident stroke and stroke mortality did not demonstrate a statistically significant association with alcohol consumption.

Of course, by now everyone wants to know just how much alcohol can be consumed, right?  The second article again demonstrated the presence of a J-curve when it comes to alcohol consumption.  In other words, consuming <1 drink/day was enough to garner statistically significant benefit whereas moderate-to-heavy consumption actually increased hemorrhagic stroke risk. 

So, remember Goldilocks when you go out w/your buddies.  You want the right amount, not too much, but clearly, not too little either.  Moderation is key.  By the way, saving it all for the weekend blow out does you no good either. 

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