Red Wine Consumption Associated With Increased Gut Microbiota α-Diversity in 3 Independent Cohorts

 Impossible! This proves it's impossible:

Safest level of alcohol consumption is none, worldwide study shows

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Red Wine Consumption Associated With Increased Gut Microbiota α-Diversity in 3 Independent Cohorts

• Caroline I. Le Roy
• Philippa M. Wells
• Jiyeon Si
• Jeroen Raes
• Jordana T. Bell
• Tim D. Spector

Published:August 28, 2019DOI:https://doi.org/10.1053/j.gastro.2019.08.024

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Keywords

• Gut Microbiota
• Red Wine
• Epidemiology

Abbreviations used in this paper:

BMI (body mass index), FGFP (Flemish Gut Flora Project), GM (gut microbiota)

See editorial on page 48.

Alcohol consumption leads to adverse health outcomes.

¹

However, moderate red wine intake has been shown to exert beneficial effects on metabolic health.

²

This is mostly attributed to red wine’s rich and varied polyphenol content.

³

Polyphenols have antimicrobial properties that can beneficially affect the gut microbiota (GM), which may have a knock-on effect on host health, as proven by animal studies and clinical trials.

⁴

Surprisingly, the consequences of red wine consumption compared to other type of alcoholic beverages on the GM remain poorly explored in epidemiologic studies. We aimed to investigate and compare the effect of various alcoholic drinks on the GM and subsequent health outcomes in large population-based cohorts.

Methods

We explored the effect of beer and cider, red wine, white wine, spirits, and sum of all alcohols on the α-diversity of the GM (profiled via 16S ribosomal RNA sequencing) in a discovery cohort of 916 UK female individuals (TwinsUK), using a linear mixed-effect model adjusted for age, body mass index (BMI), Healthy Eating Index, education, and family structure (Supplementary Figure 1). Alcohol consumption was derived from food frequency questionnaires, where the average number of glasses (ie, 2 units of alcohol) consumed monthly were reported. Alcohol patterns associated with α-diversity (P < .002) were evaluated on GM β-diversity using permutational multivariate analysis of variance on Bray-Curtis dissimilarity matrix, and their association with 85 genera present in at least 10% of the population. To evaluate the relevance of significant findings in relation to host’s health, we performed mediation analysis where α-diversity was considered as a mediator of the association between alcohol consumption and BMI or blood fasting glucose, insulin, total cholesterol, chylomicron, low-density lipoprotein and high-density lipoprotein levels, including all covariates described previously.

We aimed to replicate significant results (Bonferroni P < .002 for α-diversity and P < .0006 for genera) in 2 independent cohorts: the Flemish Gut Flora Project (FGFP; n = 1104) and the American Gut Project (n = 904, alcohol consumption reported as a binary variable), as well as in discordant twin analysis (50 pairs not included in the discovery cohort). Cohort descriptions as well as statistical analysis and data processing are detailed in the Supplementary Material.

Results

Red wine consumption was positively associated in a frequency-dependent manner with α-diversity, but even rare consumption showed an effect (Table 1). White wine also displayed a lesser but suggestive positive association with α-diversity, while we saw no associations with other alcohol categories.

 

More at link.