{"id":177954,"date":"2025-09-24T06:06:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T06:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/177954\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T06:06:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T06:06:09","slug":"there-is-no-safe-amount-of-alcohol-when-it-comes-to-dementia-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/177954\/","title":{"rendered":"There is no safe amount of alcohol when it comes to dementia, study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Drinking any amount of alcohol increases your risk of dementia later in life, according to a new study that challenges prior research<\/a> findings.<\/p>\n

Some research has suggested light drinking \u2014 such as fewer than seven drinks a week \u2014 may be more neuroprotective than no alcohol at all. Those studies, however, focused on older people and didn\u2019t differentiate between former drinkers and lifelong nondrinkers, thus potentially skewing the results, study authors said.<\/p>\n

In the new study, published Tuesday in the journal BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine<\/a>, researchers analyzed how certain genes linked to alcohol might impact how liquor consumption affects the brain.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe genetic analyses results (showed) that even small amounts of alcohol could increase dementia risk,\u201d said lead study author Anya Topiwala, a senior clinical researcher in the department of psychiatry at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the largest study on the topic, and the combination of observational and genetic analyses was key,\u201d Topiwala said via email.<\/p>\n

The genetic analysis, called Mendelian randomization, has less risk of introducing a confounding or \u201cspurious\u201d variable to explain the alcohol-dementia relationship, Topiwala said.<\/p>\n

Mendelian randomization also reduces the chance of reverse causation, such as dementia processes influencing drinking rather than the reverse, and it can also estimate the cumulative impact of alcohol consumption over a person\u2019s entire life, Topiwala said. Observational studies, however, tend to capture a snapshot of mid- to late-life drinking habits, and depend on subject recall, which may not be accurate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a fairly complicated study that provides some, but not definitive evidence, that alcohol can harm the brain regardless of how much is consumed,\u201d said neurologist Dr. Richard Isaacson, director of research at the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Florida. Isaacson, who conducts studies on cognitive improvement in people who are genetically at risk for Alzheimer\u2019s disease, was not involved in the new study.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my clinic, we tell people with the APOE4 genetic variant, which is the most common genetic risk factor for Alzheimer\u2019s, that drinking zero alcohol is best based on the available evidence,\u201d he said in an email.<\/p>\n

However, for people with less genetic risk for Alzheimer\u2019s it often depends on \u201cwhen\u201d and \u201chow\u201d people drink, Isaacson added. For example, he said, two drinks before bed on an empty stomach several nights will have a more harmful effect on brain health compared with one drink a few times a week with an early dinner.<\/p>\n

\"When<\/p>\n

When you drink may impact how alcohol affects your body, according to neurologist Dr. Richard Isaacson. – skynesher\/E+\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

An emerging link between alcohol and dementia<\/p>\n

The new study looked at data from nearly 560,000 people who participated in the UK Biobank<\/a>, a longitudinal study that included participants from England, Scotland and Wales, and the US Million Veteran Program<\/a>, or MVP, which includes people of European, African and Latin American ancestry.<\/p>\n

In that observational part of the study, people provided self-reports of how much they drank, and researchers compared alcohol consumption with their risk of developing dementia over time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the self-reporting study, people who reported consuming small amounts of alcohol (less than 7 drinks per week) had lower risk than heavy drinkers (more than 40 drinks per week),\u201d said Tara Spires-Jones, professor of neurodegeneration and director of the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cInterestingly, in this part of the study, non-drinkers and people who reported never drinking actually had similar risk of dementia to people who drank heavily,\u201d said Spires-Jones, who is also a group leader in the UK Dementia Research Institute in London. She was not involved in the study.<\/p>\n

The study then examined genetics from 45 studies of dementia in 2.4 million people and compared genetic markers associated with alcohol use over a lifetime.<\/p>\n

Higher genetic risk was associated with an increased risk of dementia, with a linear increase in dementia risk the higher the alcohol consumption, according to the study.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a 15% higher dementia risk for 3 drinks per week compared to 1 drink per week across life,\u201d Topiwala said.<\/p>\n

In addition, a doubling in the genetic risk of alcohol dependency was associated with a 16% increase in dementia risk, according to the study.<\/p>\n

\u201cNeither part of the study can conclusively prove that alcohol use directly causes dementia,\u201d Spires-Jones said. \u201cBut this adds to a large amount of similar data showing associations between alcohol intake and increased dementia risk, and fundamental neuroscience work has shown that alcohol is directly toxic to neurons in the brain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Get inspired by a weekly roundup on living well, made simple. Sign up for CNN\u2019s Life, But Better newsletter<\/a> for information and tools designed to improve your well-being.<\/p>\n

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Drinking any amount of alcohol increases your risk of dementia later in life, according to a new study…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[58253,105770,1103,105771,105769,97,96479,105775,105768,105772,105773,105774],"class_list":{"0":"post-177954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-alcohol-consumption","9":"tag-anya-topiwala","10":"tag-dementia","11":"tag-genetic-analyses","12":"tag-genetic-risk","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-longitudinal-study","15":"tag-observational-studies","16":"tag-richard-isaacson","17":"tag-study-author","18":"tag-study-authors","19":"tag-topiwala"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}