Having only one or two alcoholic drinks per day does not protect against endocrine conditions such as obesity and type 2 diabetes, according to a new study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
It is widely accepted that excessive alcohol consumption causes a wide range of health issues and is thus a major public health concern. Whether modest alcohol consumption has beneficial health effects remains controversial, however, due to the limited power of observational studies.
The researchers used mendelian randomisation (MR), which can help to mitigate biases due to confounding and reverse causation in observational studies, and evaluate the potential causal role of alcohol consumption.
“Some research has indicated that moderate drinkers may be less likely to develop obesity or diabetes compared to non-drinkers and heavy drinkers. However, our study shows that even light-to-moderate alcohol consumption (no more than one standard drink per day) does not protect against obesity and type 2 diabetes in the general population,” said Tianyuan Lu, PhD, from McGill University in Québec, Canada. “We confirmed that heavy drinking could lead to increased measures of obesity (body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio, fat mass, etc) as well as increased risk of type 2 diabetes.”
The researchers assessed self-reported alcohol intake data from 408 540 participants in the U.K. Biobank and found people who had more than 14 drinks per week had higher fat mass and a higher risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes. An extra drink per week was associated with an increased of 8% for diabetes risk and 10% for obesity risk.
These associations were stronger in women than in men. No data supported the association between moderate drinking and improved health outcomes in people drinking less than or equal to seven alcoholic beverages per week.
Source: The Endocrine Society
