A glass of beer with dinner each night
may improve the survival rate of heart attack victims and coronary disease
patients, a study has found.
A University of California-San Francisco study of guinea pigs found that
moderate alcohol consumption after a heart attack cut cell death in half and
almost doubled the recovery of muscle function in the heart.
The same occurred in coronary disease patients who went on to have heart
attacks, said Dr. Vincent Figueredo, a cardiologist at UCSF's San Francisco
General Hospital and principal study author.
He emphasized that the benefit applies only to moderate alcohol usage, defined
as one drink a day for a woman and two for a man. "If they've been consuming
moderate amounts of alcohol on a regular basis, they certainly have a better
chance of survival, of having less heart damage," Figueredo said Monday.
Despite the results, American Heart Association spokesman Phil Kibak cautioned
against heart patients seizing on the study to begin drinking."We don't want to
go out and tell people to start drinking alcohol if they don't drink already,"
he said. "But if you already drink, it probably means that drinking moderately
after a heart attack may beneficial."
Previous studies have shown that alcohol can reduce the incidence of heart
attacks in healthy people and have suggested the same for those who have
suffered some heart damage.
The UCSF research suggests that alcohol achieves the same results as a medical
procedure called preconditioning, which has been performed in the laboratory.
Doctors found previously that by briefly interrupting the flow of blood through
arteries to the heart just before a heart attack, they could sharply cut damage
to the organ. The brief cutoff apparently preconditions the muscle to prepare
for a longer stoppage.
Moderate daily alcohol use apparently achieves the same thing, Figueredo said.
"By having your glass of wine with dinner each night, you set this protection in
motion - your heart has a memory of this for the next 24 hours," he said.
The study, published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, suggests that alcohol may work through receptors on the heart cell
surface for a compound called adenosine, which regulates heart function.
Figueredo said the next step in his team's research is to look for a substitute
for alcohol that would accomplish the same result. "We're trying to understand
this protective mechanism of alcohol," he said. "If we can mimic it, we can
perhaps create a drug that someone will be able to take once or twice a day."
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