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Jan. 20, 2005
Drinking more than one glass
of alcoholic beverage didn't produce a greater benefit, they
said. Although, few of the
nurses in the study were heavy drinkers.
Researchers at Brigham
and Women's Hospital (BWH) and Harvard School of Public Health
(HSPH), in an analysis between 1995 and 2001, the author’s
evaluated cognitive function in 12,480 participants in the
Nurses' Health Study who were 70 to 81 years old, with follow-up
assessments in 11,102 two years later. They found that compared
to women who were nondrinkers, older women who consumed one
drink per day experienced less cognitive impairment.
Specifically,
such moderate consumption of alcohol seemed to produce a 20
percent reduced risk of cognitive impairment. These findings
are published in the January 20, 2005 issue of the New
England Journal of Medicine.
"Much evidence has demonstrated the heart
benefits of light alcohol drinking, but less research has focused
on cognitive functioning. While we all continue to recommend
exercising caution when consuming any type of alcohol, our
study suggests that moderate consumption might provide older
women some cognitive benefits. Additional research needs to
be conducted to better understand the links between alcohol
and cognitive function," says senior author, BWH's Francine
Grodstein, ScD.
This study was released on the heels of the
release of the government’s new 2005 Dietary Guidelines for
Americans, which also tends to support moderate drinking. It
says, “Those who choose to drink alcoholic beverages should
do so sensibly and in moderation,” and defined moderation as
up to one drink per day for women and up to two drinks per
day for men. For purposes of explaining moderation, the guidelines
count as a drink five ounces of wine, 12 ounces of regular
beer or 1 1/2 ounces of 80-proof distilled spirits.
In this
study, alcohol consumption data was collected as part of food-frequency
questionnaires issued every few years between 1980 and 1998.
Alcohol intake was measured in grams of beer, wine and liquor,
with moderate consumption --one glass per day -- defined as
less than 15 grams per day.
Then, from 1995-2002, women participated
in telephone-based cognitive surveys in which general cognition
and verbal memory and fluency were evaluated. Women who were
classified as moderate drinkers -- those who consumed less
than 15 grams of alcohol per day - had better mean cognitive
scores than nondrinkers. In addition, researchers found no
significant difference in cognitive functioning among the nondrinkers
and those who consumed more than one drink per day. Also, there
did not seem to be any substantial difference in the effects
of different forms of alcoholic beverages.
"These findings
add to the results of previous studies which assessed alcohol
consumption and cognitive functioning," said HSPH's Meir Stampfer,
MD and chair of the Department of Epidemiology. "Given our
large study population, this body of research is now powerful
enough to suggest continued research to ultimately better understand
the impact moderate alcohol has on cognitive function."
Stampfer
participated in an earlier study of data from the Nurses' Health
Study that concluded, “Among women, adherence to lifestyle
guidelines involving diet, exercise, and abstinence from smoking
is associated with a very low risk of coronary heart disease.”
Loss
of cognitive function in old age, especially severe cognitive
loss due to Alzheimer's disease, is a serious public health
problem that will only increase as the number of people in
the oldest age groups increases in the United States and other
developed countries,” wrote Denis A. Evans, M.D., and Julia
L. Bienias, ScD., in an editorial that accompanied the study.
“Effective
preventive measures are the key to coping with this potentially
overwhelming problem as it emerges and are even more important
than is treatment of affected persons. Unfortunately, very
few effective means of either prevention or treatment have
been identified to date. Studies that provide clues about prevention
are therefore welcome.”
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