WOW! I totally disagree, my use of alcohol vastly increases my social connections which is what is going to precent dementia! Don't follow me, I'm not medically trained like these people. I consider walking thru a crowded bar after a few drinks to be the fastest way to get balance training, but your doctor will never recommend that, s/he will have nothing EXACT FOR YOUR BALANCE RECOVERY! You're completely on your own for all your stroke recovery.
Do you any explanation per this research? Do smarter people have less chance of dementia?
Smarter People Tend To Drink More Alcohol.
The latest here:
Study Sheds Light on Drinking and Dementia Risk
No safe level of alcohol, largest analysis to date suggests
Key Takeaways
- New data suggested that any level of alcohol consumption raised the risk of dementia.
- A Mendelian randomization analysis found no evidence that moderate drinking protected against dementia.
- Findings could mean that even small alcohol amounts may increase population-level dementia risk.
Drinking any amount of alcohol increased dementia risk, data from a combined observational and genetic study suggested.
Light alcohol consumption was associated with low dementia risk in observational analyses, and genetic analyses showed a monotonic increasing dementia risk with higher alcohol intake, reported Anya Topiwala, DPhil, of the University of Oxford in England, and co-authors.
Mendelian randomization suggested a causal role of alcohol consumption in increasing dementia risk with no evidence supporting a protective effect at any consumption level,
Topiwala and colleagues wrote in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine.
"The Mendelian randomization analyses give more confidence that alcohol -- even in small doses -- can cause an increase in dementia risk on a population level, rather than only for certain individuals," Topiwala told MedPage Today.
"Using genetics to investigate alcohol-dementia links means there is less risk of a spurious factor like socioeconomic status, for example, being responsible," she said.
"Despite great efforts, we still do not have accessible treatments to treat dementia and prevention is key," Topiwala continued. "Alcohol consumption is widespread across the population, so our findings showing even small amounts of alcohol could increase dementia risk have great relevance."
In the U.S., dietary guidelines say that drinking less alcohol is better than drinking more and individuals who do not drink alcohol should not start drinking for any reason. Alcohol guidance is expected to be updated this year to incorporate data from an evidence review by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
In 2023, the World Health Organization issued a statement that no amount of alcohol is safe.
Some analyses have suggested there might be an optimal dose of alcohol for brain health but many of those studies focused on older adults or didn't differentiate between former and lifelong non-drinkers, Topiwala and colleagues noted.
To circumvent this, the researchers used data from two large-scale population-based cohorts: the U.S. Million Veteran Program and the U.K. Biobank. Genetic analyses used summary statistics from genome-wide association studies.
The sample included 559,559 adults ages 56 to 72 years at baseline. Most people reported drinking alcohol. Mean follow-up was 4 years for the U.S. cohort and 12 years for the U.K. cohort.
The researchers analyzed the number of self-reported weekly drinks, the presence or absence of alcohol use disorder (AUD), and data about risky drinking from an AUD screen. They adjusted findings for demographic factors, lifestyle behaviors, and physical and psychiatric health.
Three genetic measures related to alcohol use were used as exposures in the Mendelian analysis: self-reported weekly drinks (641 independent genetic variants), risky drinking (80 variants), and alcohol dependency (66 variants).
Incident all-cause dementia was determined through health records. During follow-up, 14,540 participants developed dementia and 48,034 died.
Observational analysis showed a U-shaped association between dementia and drinking. Compared with light drinkers (fewer than 7 drinks a week), heavy drinkers who had 40 or more drinks a week had a 41% increase in dementia risk. This rose to a 51% higher risk among people with AUD.
In the Mendelian randomization analysis, no U-shaped association or protective effect of low alcohol intake levels emerged. One standard deviation increase in drinks per week was associated with a 15% dementia increase. A twofold increase in AUD prevalence was tied to a 16% increase in dementia risk. Dementia risk steadily increased with more genetically predicted drinking, the researchers said.
"Neither part of the study can conclusively prove that alcohol use directly causes dementia, but this adds to a large amount of similar data showing associations between alcohol intake and increased dementia risk, and fundamental neuroscience work has shown that alcohol is directly toxic to neurons in the brain," observed Tara Spires-Jones, DPhil, of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, in comments posted to the U.K. Science Media Centre site.
People who developed dementia typically drank less in the years leading up to their diagnosis, suggesting that reverse causation -- cognitive decline leading to reduced alcohol consumption -- may underlie the protective effects of alcohol found in observational studies, Topiwala and co-authors suggested.
The results "challenge the notion that low levels of alcohol are neuroprotective," they wrote.
"Our study findings support a detrimental effect of all types of alcohol consumption on dementia risk, with no evidence supporting the previously suggested protective effect of moderate drinking," they added.
The strongest statistical associations were found in people of European ancestry due to the numbers of participants of this ethnic heritage in the study, the researchers acknowledged. Mendelian randomization is based on assumptions that can't be verified, they added.
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