The relationship between alcohol consumption and cardiovascular disease (CVD) is complex
and controversial (reviewed in
1
,
2
). In this issue, Krishnamoorthy et al,
3
discuss an analysis of a patient cohort with a troublesome alcohol history that is
defined by diagnoses of chronic alcohol syndrome and acute alcohol withdrawal based
on national database data. This analysis evaluates various factors including demographics,
traditional risk factors and a range of CVD events in 7.8 million patients as a surrogate
of a national estimate of approximately 39 million patient discharges for 2009-2010.
Interestingly, they find that troublesome alcohol history patients have a lower prevalence
of CVD events compared to their defined general patient population,
3
which is still significant after adjustment for demographics and traditional risk
factors. The findings are in contrast to previously published studies that demonstrate
a dichotomous relationship between low to moderate consumption of alcohol versus heavy
consumption of alcohol on CVD events.
4
,
5
,
6
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Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
January 30,
2018
Received:
January 18,
2018
Footnotes
☆☆The authors have no financial or other conflicts of interest to disclose.
Identification
Copyright
© 2018 Southern Society for Clinical Investigation. Published by All rights reserved.
