Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Oct;135(10):1213-1230.e3.
doi: 10.1016/j.amjmed.2022.04.021. Epub 2022 May 14.

Alcohol Consumption and Cardiovascular Health

Chayakrit Krittanawong  1 , Ameesh Isath  2 , Robert S Rosenson  3 , Muzamil Khawaja  4 , Zhen Wang  5 , Sonya E Fogg  6 , Salim S Virani  7 , Lu Qi  8 , Yin Cao  9 , Michelle T Long  10 , Christy C Tangney  11 , Carl J Lavie  12
Affiliations

Alcohol Consumption and Cardiovascular Health

Chayakrit Krittanawong et al. Am J Med. 2022 Oct.

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: Alcohol consumption; Beer consumption; Cardiovascular disease; Liquor consumption; Wine consumption.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

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.

References

    1. United States Department of Agriculture. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020–2025. Available at: https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/sites/default/files/2020-12/Dietary_Gu.... Accessed April 8, 2022.
    1. Ricci C, Schutte AE, Schutte R, Smits CM, Pieters M. Trends in alcohol consumption in relation to cause-specific and all-cause mortality in the United States: a report from the NHANES linked to the US mortality registry. Am J Clin Nutr 2020;111(3):580–9. - PubMed
    1. Arranz S, Chiva-Blanch M, Valdera-Martínez P, Medina-Remón A, Lamuela-Raventós RM, Estruch R. Wine, beer, alcohol and polyphenols on cardiovascular disease and cancer. Nutrients 2012;4(7):759–81. - PMC - PubMed
    1. GBD 2017 Risk Factor Collaborators. Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 84 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. Lancet 2018;392(10159):1923–94. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Yusuf S, Hawken S, Ounpuu S, et al. Effect of potentially modifiable risk factors associated with myocardial infarction in 52 countries (the INTERHEART study): case-control study. Lancet 2004;364(9438):937–52. - PubMed

Publication types