Digestery
Diet and food › Moderate Drinking and the Heart › Studies

Population study: followed a group

Study that followed 26,399 women: light drinking linked to lower heart disease and death

Djoussé and colleagues · Circulation · 2009

Original title: Alcohol consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease and death in women: potential mediating mechanisms.

Under review. A person has not yet checked this summary against the paper. It is written from the PubMed abstract. Until a person checks it, search engines are asked not to list this page.

What the study found

Points to benefit

Drinking 5 to 14.9 g/d was linked to 26% lower heart disease, 35% lower total death and 51% lower heart death than abstainers, in a J-shaped pattern.

The study at a glance

Type of study
Population study: followed a group
Who or what was studied
26,399 people · 26,399 women followed an average of 12.2 years
What was tested
Drinking 5 to 14.9 g of alcohol a day vs not drinking
What it measured
The question itself: heart disease and death
Who has a stake
No disclosure in PubMed
No COI statement in PubMed; NIH grants listed.
Journal
Circulation, 2009
Source
PubMed record 19597054. This page is based on the abstract only.

How much this study counts

  • –Shows a link, not a cause: people chose their own habits, and other differences between them may explain the result.
  • ✓Followed people over time, so habits were recorded before the outcome happened.
  • ✓Large: 26,399 people.
  • ✓Measured the question itself: heart disease and death.
  • •The PubMed record has no conflict-of-interest statement.
  • •Summarized from the PubMed abstract only. The full paper may hold details the abstract leaves out.

✓ Strength– Limit• Note

These points come from fixed rules about the type of study, its size and length, what it measured, and who has a stake. Every study on Digestery gets the same rules.

Where this study sits

Each dot is one on-topic paper on this question. Steps near the top answer the question more directly.

↑ Stronger evidence

  1. Trials in people: heart disease

    0

    Not done yet. This is the step that would answer the question.

  2. Trials in people: other measures

    0

    None among the papers we read.

  3. Trials in people: lab tests or safety

    0

    None among the papers we read.

  4. Population studies

    5

    3 benefit, 1 mixed, 1 harm

    ↑ This study is the ringed dot

  5. Blood levels and genes

    6

    1 mixed, 2 no difference, 3 harm

↓ Weaker evidence

  • Points to benefit
  • Mixed
  • No difference
  • No direction
  • Points to harm

How it fits with the other research

The short answer to “Is moderate drinking good or bad for your heart?”

Not shown to help; may harm.

Confidence: very low. Based on 21 on-topic papers.

Read the full answer

Of the other 4 papers on the same step: 2 benefit, 1 mixed, 1 harm. This one found benefit.

Other papers on the same step

See all 21 studies on this question

How this page was made

Label

First read of the abstract
Claude Sonnet
Independent second read
Claude Haiku
Differences settled
The two reads agreed on every checked field. Claude Opus 5.5.
Headline
Claude Sonnet, from the checked study record. A script checked its numbers and wording.
Numbers
Checked against the abstract by a script
“How much this study counts”
Fixed rules, the same for every study
Source check by a person
Not yet. Required before search engines may list this page.

Spot an error? Email a flag with a link to your source, or use the form on the question page.