Moderate drinking found beneficial

A new study by University of Missouri-Columbia's researchers, due to be published this autumn in the scientific journal "Microcirculation", has found that moderate drinking from any source not only maintains a healthy heart, but also reduces damage to affected tissue after a heart attack.

The researchers led by Ron Korthuis said that during a heart attack, the blood flow to many parts of the body is reduced.

When normal blood flow is resumed several chemicals are produced that cause white blood cells to travel to the damaged area, where they attach themselves to the artery wall using an adhesion molecule such as P-selectin, and start to destroy the damaged tissue.

Ingestion of alcohol can prevent this happening by preventing the white blood cells from sticking to the artery wall. This works by making the artery wall more slippery than it would otherwise be.

Tests carried out to prove this theory showed that in subjects who were treated with alcohol, the tissue affected by the low blood flow was much healthier and stronger than in those who were not.

Korthuis was keen to stress that this was not a licence to drink.

He said: "We're trying to identify these chemical reactions so we can develop a drug that would start this chain reaction, but not have the side effects of alcohol."