Does moderate boozing reduce heart failure risk?

Conclusion This study suggests drinking up to about 12 UK units a week is associated with a lower risk of heart failure in men compared with never drinking alcohol. There was a similar result for women, but the results were not as robust and did not rule out the possibility of there being no difference. The study benefits from its large size (more than 14,000 people) and the fact it collected its data prospectively over a long period of time. However, studying the impact of alcohol on outcomes is fraught with difficulty. These difficulties include people not being entirely sure what a "drink" or a "unit" is, and reporting their intakes incorrectly as a result. In addition, people may intentionally misreport their alcohol intake – for example, if they are concerned about what the researchers will think about their intake. Also, people who do not drink may do so for reasons linked to their health, so may have a greater risk of being unhealthy. Other limitations are that while the researchers did try to take a number of confounders into account, unmeasured factors could still be having an effect, such as diet. For example, these confounders were only assessed at the start of the study, and people may have changed over the study period (such as taking up smoking).  The study only identified people who were hospitalised for, or died from, heart failure. This misses people who had not yet been hospitalised or died from the condition. The results also...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Heart/lungs Food/diet Source Type: news