Study Shows Alcohol Intake May Have Positive and Negative Effects on

A new study identified 60 alcohol-associated circulating metabolites, which appear to produce counteractive effects on the risk of heart disease.

While past research has indicated that moderate alcohol consumption can lower one’s risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), more recent studies suggest that moderate levels of drinking may be hazardous to heart health. A new analysis led by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) and the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University now sheds new insight on this complex relationship between alcohol consumption and the progression of CVD.

Published in the journal BMC Medicine, the study found that alcohol consumption may have counteractive effects on CVD risk, depending on the biological presence of certain circulating metabolites—molecules that are produced during or after a substance is metabolized and studied as biomarkers of many diseases.

The researchers observed a total of 60 alcohol consumption-related metabolites, identifying seven circulating metabolites that link long-term moderate alcohol consumption with an increased risk of CVD, and three circulating metabolites that link this same drinking pattern with a lower risk of CVD.

The findings provide a better understanding of the molecular pathway of long-term alcohol consumption and highlight the need for and direction of further research on these metabolites to inform targeted prevention and treatment of alcohol-related CVD.

“The study findings demonstrate that alcohol consumption may trigger changes of our metabolomic profiles, potentially yielding both beneficial and harmful outcomes,” says Chunyu Liu, assistant professor of biostatistics at BUSPH and co-corresponding/co-senior author of the study along with Jiantao Ma, N14, assistant professor in the Division of Nutrition Epidemiology and Data Science at the Friedman School. “Because the majority of our study participants are moderate alcohol consumers, our findings contribute to the ongoing discussion about the relationship between moderate alcohol drinking and heart health.”

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