The bottom line: Moderate alcohol consumption is associated with a lower risk of several cardiovascular diseases compared to non-drinkers or heavy drinkers.
This finding is particularly noteworthy given that a few researchers have recently called into question the potential benefits of moderate drinking citing flaws in the methodology of studies that grouped abstainers with former drinkers, who may have stopped consuming alcohol for health reasons.
In an accompanying British Medical Journal editorial, researchers from Harvard Medical School and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine underscored that these findings are supported by four decades of studies with similar results. They noted that this study advances the field of alcohol research by using data collected in electronic health records and large registries, representing “a promising convergence between medicine, public health, and research.”
This study reviewed the electronic medical records of more than 1.9 million adults, free from cardiovascular disease at baseline, from 1997 to 2010. The patients were separated in to five categories that included non-drinkers, former drinkers, occasional drinkers, moderate drinkers and heavy drinkers.
The study found that “the protective effect of alcohol were most obvious for moderate drinkers for major cardiac diseases including myocardial infarction, ischemic stroke, sudden coronary death, heart failure, peripheral arterial disease, and abdominal aortic aneurysm, where the risk factors were significantly reduced even after separation of the group of current non-drinkers into more specific categories.”
Also interesting was the decreased Body Mass Index (BMI), less incidence of diabetes as well as the decreased incidence of using anti-hypertensive and cholesterol lowering medications in the moderate drinkers.