August 13, 2024
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A study published in the JAMA Network Open contradicts a long-standing belief that some alcohol intake can have benefits for the heart.
Older adults in Britain who drank modest amounts of alcohol faced a higher risk of getting cancer and no health benefits, new research found.
A study published Monday in the JAMA Network Open contradicts a long-standing belief that some alcohol intake can have benefits for the heart. Researchers found there was no reduction in heart disease death among light or moderate drinkers — who average about one or two alcoholic drinks a day — in comparison with people who drink about once a week.
"It is clear that alcohol consumption is related to a higher risk of cancer from the first drop, so we think that medical advice should not recommend consuming alcohol to improve health," Rosario Ortolá, a co-author of the study from the Autonomous University of Madrid, told the Guardian.
The study also said deaths associated with alcohol consumption were higher in people who lived in lower income areas or who had existing health problems.
The link between alcohol intake and cancer has been well-established. Just one drink a day increases breast cancer risk by 5% to 9% compared with people who abstain, the World Health Organization said.
U.S. dietary guidelines recommend adults over 21 either choose not to drink or to drink in moderation — "limiting intake to 2 drinks or less in a day for men and 1 drink or less in a day for women."
The new study used data from 135,103 participants in the UK Biobank health database who were 60 years old and older, tracking them over 12 years. Researchers assigned the participants to categories based on their average daily alcohol intake: occasional, low risk, moderate risk and high risk. Occasional was defined as less than 2.86 grams of alcohol per day, while high risk was more than 40 grams per day for men and 20 grams for women. The average drink in the United States has about 14 grams of alcohol.
Researchers determined which patients died by the end of the study, in 2021, and found that high-risk drinking was associated with a 33% higher risk of dying from any cause compared with occasional drinkers. High-risk drinking was also linked with a greater risk of dying from cancer or cardiovascular disease.
When compared with occasional drinking, moderate-risk drinking was associated with a 10% greater risk of death from any cause, and a 15% greater risk of death from cancer. Low-risk drinking was associated with an 11% greater risk of death from cancer in comparison with occasional drinking.
Researchers chose to involve light drinkers rather than people who abstain in their research. Some people stop drinking because they are seriously ill so looking to abstainers for health comparisons about drinking may have incorrectly made light drinkers in previous studies look healthier than they actually were, the New York Times reported.
The study also found alcohol-related health effects were even worse for people who already had health issues or who lived in low-income areas.
"We think that older adults with worse health are more susceptible to the harmful effects of alcohol owing to their greater morbidity, higher use of alcohol-interacting drugs and reduced tolerance to alcohol," Ortolá told the Guardian. "Also, there is evidence that socioeconomically disadvantaged populations have higher rates of alcohol-related harms for equivalent and even lower amounts of alcohol, probably owing to the coexistence of other health challenges, including less healthy lifestyles, and lower social support or access to health care."
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