Where does this news come from?
The Korean government provides 1 health insurance policy for its entire population: the Korean National Health Insurance Service. Everyone from the age of 40 can participate in a free biannual health check. To do so, you must complete an extensive questionnaire about your lifestyle, health and illness.
Korean scientists wanted it association between alcohol consumption and new diagnoses of dementia investigate (1):
- To do this, they analyzed the files of nearly 4 million people with an average age of 55 years.
- The researchers only retained those people for whom 3 consecutive biennial records and fully completed questionnaires were available.
- They excluded files from people with cancer and diagnosed dementia.
How did the research work?
- The scientists divided the participants into 4 groups according to their drinking habits:
- no alcohol consumption
- light consumption (at least 1 glass per day)
- moderate consumption (1 to 2 glasses a day)
- excessive consumption (at least 3 glasses a day)
- Then they looked at how many people had been diagnosed with dementia:
- Over a period of about 6 years developed more than 100,000 dementia participantswhose:
- Compared to total abstainers, the light and moderate drinkers had dementia less often:
- 21% less dementia with light alcohol consumption
- 17% less dementia with moderate consumption
- Excessive drinkers had 8% higher risk of dementia than total abstainers.
Bron
(1) Keun Hye Jeon, MD; Kyungdo Han, PhD; Su-Min Jeong, MD et al. Changes in Alcohol Consumption and Risk of Dementia in a Nationwide Cohort in South Korea. JAMA Neurology 2023;6(2):e2254771
How should you interpret this news?
- Alcohol consumption was distributed among the different participant groups as follows:
- Slightly more than half (54.8%) of the participants did not drink alcohol.
- 26.7% drank at most 1 glass a day.
- 11% drank 1 to 2 glasses a day.
- The other 7.5% drank excessively.
- In the group non-drinkers already especially women.
- After further analysis of the group of non-drinkers, it turned out that there were participants who had stopped drinking for health reasons.
- When the researchers had selected these individuals, the risk of dementia fell among the teetotalers.
- Further analysis showed that less drinking reduced the risk of dementia, while more drinking actually increased the risk.
- Alcohol consumption is based on questionnaireswhich we know they are not always correct are filled in.
- In addition, the differences between the 4 groups are not so greatand is the group teetotalers are a heterogeneous group.
The results are consistent with previous review research:
- Mild to moderate alcohol consumption turns out to be certain protective effect to have (2).
- That’s for sure excessive drinking increases your risk of dementia.
Conclusion
According to solid Korean research, light to moderate alcohol consumption would have a slightly protective effect on your risk of dementia. Nevertheless, it remains delicate to make statements about this, because the group of teetotalers also included people who had stopped drinking for health reasons. When these were filtered out, the beneficial effect of alcohol in light and moderate drinkers could be found with a magnifying glass. What is certain is that excessive drinking increases your risk of dementia.
References
(2) Anstey KJ, Ee N, Eramudugolla R, Jagger C, Peters R. A systematic review of meta-analyses that evaluate risk factors for dementia to evaluate the quantity, quality, and global representativeness of evidence. J Alzheimers Dis. 2019;70(s1):S165-S186. doi:10.3233/JAD-190181