An alcoholic drink a day can significantly reduce the risk for heart disease in men

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: June 6, 2006
An alcoholic drink a day can significantly reduce the risk for heart disease in men, a new study finds, but women get almost the same benefit with only one drink a week. The report, which appears online in the British medical journal BMJ, suggests that for women, alcohol intake is the primary protective factor, while for men, it is drinking frequency.
The Danish study included 27,178 men and 29,875 women volunteers who were free of coronary heart disease at the start of the study. They filled out questionnaires and underwent interviews about their eating and drinking habits, recording how many drinks they had per week. A drink was defined as containing 12 grams of ethanol, a little less than one-half ounce.
The researchers then followed the subjects for an average of 5.7 years. There were 749 coronary heart disease events among the women, and 1,238 among the men. Women consumed an average of 5.5 drinks a week; men, an average of 11.3.
For men, the more they drank, the lower the risk. One drink a week lowered the risk by about 7 percent, two to four drinks by 22 percent and five or six drinks a week by 29 percent. Those who drank every day had a 41 percent lower risk of heart disease than those who did not drink at all. Even among men who had up to 35 drinks per week, the protection persisted.