“Drinking moderate amounts of alcohol every day does not — as once thought — protect against death from heart disease,” writes the Washington Post, “nor does it contribute to a longer life, according to a sweeping new analysis of alcohol research.”
The review, which examined existing research on the health and drinking habits of nearly 5 million people, is one of the largest studies to debunk the widely held belief that moderate drinking of wine or other alcoholic beverages is good for you. Last year, researchers in Britain examined genetic and medical data of nearly 400,000 people and concluded that even low alcohol intake was associated with increased risk of disease.
The new study, which appears Friday in Jama Network Open, also found that drinking relatively low levels of alcohol — 25 grams a day for women (less than 1 ounce) and 45 grams (about 1.5 ounces) or more per day for men — actually increased the risk of death. A standard wine pour is about 5 ounces. The standard serving size for beer is 12 ounces, and for distilled spirits, 1.5 ounces. “This study punctures the hope of many that moderate alcohol use is healthy,” said Robert DuPont, a psychiatrist and substance abuse expert who served as the first director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse…. Much of the research into the health effects of alcohol has been funded by the alcohol industry. One recent report found that 13,500 studies have been directly or indirectly paid for by the industry….
The new review, called a “meta-analysis,” looked at 107 observational studies that involved more than 4.8 million people. The study stressed that previous estimates of the benefits of moderate alcohol consumption on the risk of death by “all causes” — meaning anything, including heart disease, cancer, infections and automobile accidents — were “significantly” biased by flaws in study design. Earlier research did not adjust for numerous factors that could influence the outcome, for example, age, sex, economic status and lifestyle behaviors such as exercise, smoking and diet, they said. Using statistical software, the researchers essentially removed the bias, adjusting for various factors that could skew the research. After doing so, they found no significant declines in the risk of death by any causes among the moderate drinkers.
