AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
SAN FRANCISCO — Most studies suggesting that moderate drinking staves off heart disease are flawed, an international team of researchers concluded in a report released last week.
In the suspect studies, people who had cut back on or quit drinking because they were ill, frail or on medication were counted as “abstainers,” whose death rates were compared with those of drinkers, according to the study released in San Francisco.
The comparisons indicated that those who knocked back up to four drinks a day tended to live longer than abstainers.
The mortality difference could have been a result of the shabby health of those compelled to give up booze rather than health benefits of alcohol, said a research team led by universities in San Francisco and Victoria, British Columbia.
“These findings suggest that caution should be exerted in recommending light drinking to abstainers because of the possibility that this result may be more apparent than real,” said Tim Stockwell of the Centre for Addictions Research at the University of Victoria.
Researchers analyzed 54 studies from North America, Europe, Asia and the Caribbean.
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