Abstract
Background: Evidence that alcohol consumption is inversely associated with long-term coronary artery disease (CAD) mortality independent of genetic and early life environmental factors is lacking.
Objective: We evaluated whether alcohol consumption was prospectively associated with CAD mortality risk independent of familial factors.
Design: In total, 843 male twins (396 pairs and 51 unpaired twins) aged 42–55 y (mean 48 y) without baseline CAD reported beer, wine, and spirits consumption at baseline (1969–1973) and were followed up to 2010 in the prospective National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Twin Study. Data on usual alcohol consumption over the past year were collected. Outcome was time to event, where the primary event was death from CAD and secondary events were death from cardiovascular disease and all causes. HRs were estimated by using frailty survival models, both overall and within-pair.
Results: There were 129 CAD deaths and 219 cardiovascular deaths during 41 y of follow-up. In the whole cohort, after adjustment for caloric intake and cardiovascular disease risk factors, overall HRs per 10-g increment in alcohol intake were 0.94 (95% CI: 0.89, 0.98) for CAD and 0.97 (95% CI: 0.93, 1.00) for cardiovascular mortality. The within-pair adjusted HRs for a twin with 10-g higher daily alcohol consumption than his co-twin were 0.90 (95% CI: 0.84, 0.97) for CAD and 0.95 (95% CI: 0.90, 1.00) for cardiovascular disease mortality in the cohort pooled by zygosity, which remained similar among monozygotic twins. All 3 beverage types tended to be associated with lower CAD mortality risk within-pair to a similar degree. Alcohol consumption was not associated with total mortality risk overall or within-pair.
Conclusion: Higher usual alcohol consumption is associated with lower CAD mortality risk, independent of germline and early life environment and adulthood experience shared among twins, supporting a possible causal role of alcohol consumption in lowering CAD death risk. This trial was registered atclinicaltrials.gov as NCT00005124.
Full study PDF: http://ajcn.nutrition.org/
Having just enjoyed a pint or three of Blonde Witch I now find it's also good for me, who'd have thunk it?
Cheers
Graham
4 comments:
A great find Graham, I have never trusted a man that did not like a drink or did not love sport. Some say (our perpetual troll I partake of the awful wine box) nothing could be further from the truth. Rioja by the case, that be me.
Eddie
The first author of a LC book "Letter on Corpulence" W. Banting, drunk quite a bit of alcohol during his day.
I am not a drinker myself - it doesn't agree with me.
let's not forget though to keep things in balance and moderate that alcohol intake, alcoholic liver disease is a silent killer, most people don't know they have it till it's too late-first symptoms often only showing up in end stage uncompensated liver failure when it becomes a cruel battle to keep the consequences at bay. Ascites, constant fluid build up in the abdomen needs tapping, the pressure will cause rents in the diaphragm and the fluid will pass through to the chest cavity causing pleural effusion with chest pain and decreased lung capacity. As the liver becomes more dense and fibrous vascular blood flow is damned and has to find alternate routes back to the heart causing massively dilated blood vessels in the stomach wall with the ever present possibility of a fatal rupture, eventually the toxin build up in the blood begins to slowly cause brain damage, prognosis upon diagnosis - if ascites is present 3-5 years life expectancy, transplant is the only possible cure.
thanks, Dr. R. Hassad
Thank you for your comment Dr. Hassad. Alcoholism is another growing epidemic in the so called developed world, especially amongst the young. No pun intended, but your information is extremely sobering. I will certainly be cutting back on the booze, not that I am an alcoholic, but reducing a couple of bottles of wine a week will do nothing but good.
Eddie
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