Abstract
Background
Studies evaluating alcohol consumption and cardiovascular diseases have shown inconsistent
results.
Methods
We performed a systematic review of peer-reviewed publications from an extensive query
of Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid Embase, Ovid Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Scopus,
and Web of Science from database inception to March 2022 for all studies that reported
the association between alcohol consumption in terms of quantity (daily or weekly
amounts) and type of beverage (wine, beer or spirit) and cardiovascular disease events.
Results
The study population included a total of 1,579,435 individuals based on 56 cohorts
from several countries. We found that moderate wine consumption defined as 1-4 drinks
per week was associated with a reduction in risk for cardiovascular mortality when
compared with beer or spirits. However, higher risk for cardiovascular disease mortality
was typically seen with heavier daily or weekly alcohol consumption across all types
of beverages.
Conclusions
It is possible that the observational studies may overestimate the benefits of alcohol
for cardiovascular disease outcomes. Although moderate wine consumption is probably
associated with low cardiovascular disease events, there are many confounding factors,
in particular, lifestyle, genetic, and socioeconomic associations with wine drinking,
which likely explain much of the association with wine and reduced cardiovascular
disease events. Further prospective study of alcohol and all-cause mortality, including
cancer, is needed.
Keywords
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Article Info
Publication History
Published online: May 14, 2022
Publication stage
In Press Journal Pre-ProofFootnotes
Funding: None.
Conflicts of Interest: Dr. Krittanawong discloses the following relationships – Member of the American College of Cardiology Solution Set Oversight Committee, the American Heart Association Committee of the Council on Genomic and Precision Medicine, and the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) Task Force on Performance Measures, The Lancet Digital Health (Advisory Board), European Heart Journal Digital Health (Editorial board), Journal of the American Heart Association (Editorial board), JACC: Asia (Section Editor), The Journal of Scientific Innovation in Medicine (Associate Editor), and Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine (Associate Editor). Dr. Rosenson receives research funding to his institution from Amgen, Arrowhead, Lilly, NIH, Novartis, Regeneron; consulting fees from Amgen, Lilly, Novartis, Regeneron, non-promotional speaking fees from Amgen, Kowa; royalties from Wolters Kluwer for UpToDate, and has stock holdings in MediMergent LLC. Dr. Virani discloses the following Grant support: Department of Veterans Affairs, World Heart Federation, Tahir and Jooma Family. Honorarium: American College of Cardiology (Associate Editor for Innovations, ACC.org). Steering Committee: Patient and Provider Assessment of Lipid Management (PALM) registry at Duke Clinical Research Institute (no financial remuneration). Dr. Qi is supported by grants from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (HL071981, HL034594, HL126024), the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (DK115679, DK091718, DK100383, DK078616), the Fogarty International Center (TW010790), Tulane Research Centers of Excellence Awards. Dr. Qi is also supported by P30DK072476 and NIGMS P20GM109036. Dr. Long is supported in part by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases K23 DK113252, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Grant #2019085, Gilead Sciences Research Scholars Award, Echosens Corporation, the Boston University. Dr. Tangney is an UpTodate consultant. Other authors have no disclosure.
Authorship: All authors had access to the data, contributed significantly to the work and a role in writing the manuscript.
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