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According to a major genetic study published Thursday in The Lancet, mild to moderate alcohol consumption – just one or two drinks a day – does not protect against attacks.
These results are another blow to the belief that consuming small amounts of alcohol can be good for your health.
"There is no protective effect of moderate consumption of alcohol against stroke," said Zhengming Chen, one of the authors of the "cerebrovascular accident", study and epidemiologist at the University of Oxford, in a statement released. "Even a moderate consumption of alcohol increases the risks of having a stroke."
As I have already explained, the idea that drinking a beer or a glass of wine every day provides health benefits is based primarily on studies suggesting that the link between alcohol and mortality has a J-shaped curve: light-to-moderate drinkers (up to two drinks a day) have a lower risk of premature death (stroke and heart attack) than non-smokers, and then, as As alcohol consumption increases, the risk of death also increases.
But the scientific evidence for this idea – moderate consumption is not only good for us, but better than abstaining – has always been low, as it does not take into account the possibility that many drug addicts may have stopped smoking. drink alcohol because of existing medical problems. This new study shows how weak these previous studies might have been.
A single control group
For the study, Chen and his colleagues from Oxford University collaborated with researchers from Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing, China. China. They analyzed 10 years of data collected from more than 500,000 men and women in China participating in a larger health research project. Participants lived in both urban and rural areas in China, and their average age at the beginning of the study (between 2004 and 2008) was 52 years.
One-third (33%) of men and 2% of women reported drinking at least some alcohol – mainly spirits – weekly. (As the authors of the study point out, for cultural reasons, few women in China drink alcohol.)
The researchers focused their study on a Chinese population because many people of East Asian origin have a genetic variant that makes them intolerant to alcohol. When people with this variant drink alcohol, they have an extremely uncomfortable hot flash reaction.
The variant does not affect other factors that increase or decrease the risk of stroke, such as diet, smoking, physical activity and socio-economic status. She therefore formed a unique "control group" that did not consume alcohol for the study. Of the 500,000 people surveyed in this study, about 160,000 had this variant.
Main conclusions
The health of the participants was followed for about 10 years, until early 2017. During this period, about 10,000 men had a stroke. When the researchers compared the rate of strokes in men based on their alcohol consumption, they found that consuming one to two glasses of alcohol a day increased the risk of 10 to 15%, while consuming the equivalent of four glasses a day increased the risk by 35 percent.
A drink in the study equates to a small glass of wine, a bottle of beer or a single measure of spirits (strong liquor).
The study has revealed no evidence that the consumption of one or two alcoholic drinks a day has a protective effect.
These findings are corroborated by the fact that women participating in the study with the gene variant were no less at risk of stroke than those without the variant – presumably because 39 neither of the two groups drank alcohol.
According to the results of the study, Chen and colleagues estimate that alcohol is responsible for 8% of ischemic strokes (caused by a blood clot in the brain) and 16% of hemorrhagic strokes (caused by bleeding in the brain) men in China.
In China, stroke is the leading cause of premature death in adults. (This is the fifth leading cause of premature death in the United States.)
The study also examined the effects of alcohol use on the risk of heart attack, but only 2,000 of the men in the study had a heart attack, a number too small to give a statistically significant result, according to the authors. researchers.
& # 39; Too good to be true & # 39;
Despite its rather unique approach, the study remains an observation, which means it can not prove that alcohol was the direct cause of the higher risk of stroke seen in the study drinkers.
The study also relied on the fact that participants self-declared how much alcohol they had drunk, and such reports may be inaccurate.
In addition, most of the alcohol consumed by study participants was alcohol. Results may or may not apply to alcohol in beer or wine.
Evidence from other research suggests that yes, however. A study published last year in The Lancet, for example, revealed that no amount of wine, beer or strong alcohol was safe for general health. And just last month, US researchers announced that moderate alcohol consumption of any type (7 to 13 glasses per week) significantly increased the risk of hypertension.
As Dr. Tim Chico, a cardiologist at the University of Sheffield and not having participated in the study, yesterday told Nicola Davis, journalist at Guardian, that the impact of the Alcohol on the risk of stroke would likely vary from one individual to another, depending on the underlying risk of each person. – their age, weight and lifestyle factors such as smoking and levels of physical activity.
But that does not mean that drinking alcohol is safe for anyone. It does not mean that consuming it is beneficial.
"Unfortunately, when something seems too good to be true, that's the case, and this study reveals little evidence that alcohol protects," added Chico.
For more information: You will find the study on the Lancet website.
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