Estudios científicos

Alcohol Consumption and Cardiovascular Health

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.

Comentarios divulgativos:

En este trabajo los autores evalúan sistemáticamente la evidencia científica disponible sobre la relación entre el nivel de consumo y la salud cardiovascular. Finalmente, tras evaluar los resultados de 56 estudios observacionales que incluían un total de 1.579.435 participantes, esta investigación encontró que un consumo moderado se asociaba con un menor riesgo de cardiopatía coronaria, infarto de miocardio y mortalidad cardiovascular. Mientras que un consumo elevado diario o semanal se asociaba con efectos dañinos. Y, concretamente, el consumo moderado de vino se asociaba con un riesgo un 25% más bajo de mortalidad cardiovascular.

Asimismo, los autores señalan que los estudios evaluados son de tipo observacional, y una de sus posibles limitaciones es la presencia de factores de confusión, que no estén controlados, y puedan interferir en los resultados obtenidos (sobreestimación), como, por ejemplo, el estilo de vida, la genética o factores socioeconómicos. Indican que en el futuro son necesarios estudios que tengan en cuenta estas variables, así como la mortalidad por todas las causas, incluido el cáncer.