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The study found an association between levels of alcohol intake and the incidence of heart disease in men, suggesting that higher levels of alcohol intake can be protective. However, experts were critical, suggesting that this does not mean that people should purposefully drink more.
Prof Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said:
“The relationship between alcohol and heart disease remains controversial. While there is good evidence that moderate consumption is protective in people who are at substantial risk of heart disease (which excludes most people under the age of 40) we also know that most people underestimate how much they drink. This paper adds to the existing literature but should not be considered as definitive. Certainly, people should not be encouraged to drink more as a result of this research.”
Nigel Hawkes, Director of Straight Statistics, said:
“EPIC is a well-designed prospective study with good arrangements for collecting data on diet and lifestyle.
“One puzzling feature of the paper is that it concludes (Table 4) that former drinkers have a lower risk of coronary heart disease than never-drinkers, while the incidence rates (Table 3) show the opposite. The incidence of CHD is actually higher in former-drinkers (497 per 100,000) than in non-drinkers (398 per 100,000).
“The very small number of cases in never-drinkers among men (25) leads to wide confidence intervals for the hazard ratios for the other categories. The results for former drinkers and low consumers are not statistically significant.
“Finally, it would have been useful to have included all-cause mortality. Very heavy drinkers may have died of other causes.”
Cathy Ross, senior cardiac nurse with the British Heart Foundation (BHF), said:
“The heart protective benefits of alcohol are well documented and this observational Spanish study supports this theory.
“Whilst moderate alcohol intake can lower the risk of having a heart attack, coronary heart disease is just one type of heart disease. Cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle, is associated with high alcohol intake and can lead to a poor quality of life and premature death.
“The heart is just one of many organs in the body. While alcohol could offer limited protection to one organ, abuse of it can damage the heart and other organs such as the liver, pancreas and brain.
“This study does not change the message that drinking moderately can be beneficial to the heart but drinking in excess is harmful and a danger to your health generally.”
Prof Robert Sutton DPhil FRCS, Professor of Surgery at the University of Liverpool, said:
“This study suffers from several flaws, so cannot be taken to suggest that high levels of alcohol intake can improve health. Moderate alcohol consumption has been suggested to be beneficial from a number of studies, with some data to support red wine as the principal agent. This new study was based on self-reported information in which those drinking more stated they had less heart disease, but those drinking more would probably be less likely to see doctors and have heart disease identified. The dietary questionnaire that the authors used was not described, so its validity is open to question. There was no attempt to determine what type of alcohol was consumed, although this could be important since in Spain much red wine is drunk.
“Surprisingly, the authors state that determining what type of alcoholic beverage has been consumed is actually of no public health significance, but many would disagree. Nor was there any attempt evident to determine the pattern of drinking – less frequent, higher doses are likely to be more harmful to some parts of the body than others. The finding that there was no relationship between alcohol consumption and heart disease in women is highly unusual and suggests that the whole study was underpowered. Most importantly, all other alcohol-related diseases were completely ignored so that a highly biased view of the effects of alcohol results.”