Alcohol intake, wine consumption and the development of depression: the PREDIMED study

Abstract

Background: Alcoholic beverages are widely consumed. Depression, the most prevalent mental disorder worldwide, has been related to alcohol intake. We aimed to prospectively assess the association between alcohol intake and incident depression using repeated measurements of alcohol intake.

Methods: We followed-up 5,505 high-risk men and women (55 to 80 y) of the PREDIMED Trial for up to seven years. Participants were initially free of depression or a history of depression, and did not have any history of alcohol-related problems. A 137-item validated food frequency questionnaire administered by a dietician was repeated annually to assess alcohol intake. Participants were classified as incident cases of depression when they reported a new clinical diagnosis of depression, and/or initiated the use of antidepressant drugs. Cox regression analyses were fitted over 23,655 person-years.

Results: Moderate alcohol intake within the range of 5 to 15 g/day was significantly associated with lower risk of incident depression (hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI) = 0.72 (0.53 to 0.98) versus abstainers). Specifically, wine consumption in the range of two to seven drinks/week was significantly associated with lower rates of depression (HR (95% CI) = 0.68 (0.47 to 0.98)).

Conclusions: Moderate consumption of wine may reduce the incidence of depression, while heavy drinkers seem to be at higher risk.

Figure 1

Dose–response relationship between alcohol intake(g/day)and depression risk(HR and 95%CI). Restricted cubic spline model. The PREDIMED Study 2003 to 2010. The black line represents the HR and the dashed lines represent the 95% confidence interval. Adjusted for age, smoking, physical activity (MET-min/d), total energy intake (Kcal/day), baseline body mass index (kg/m²), marital status, intervention group, recruiting center, educational level and the number of persons living at home.