Resumen

BERMUDEZ-PIRELA, V et al. El Alcohol: ¿Factor de riesgo o de protección para la enfermedad coronaria?. AVFT [online]. 2003, vol.22, n.2, pp.116-125. ISSN 0798-0264.

ABSTRACT Since the early part of the 20th century, clinicians have noted that coronary heart disease appears to occur less commonly among people who consume alcohol than among abstainers. Over the last 30 years, formal scientific inquiry has confirmed this observation. Such analyses included studies that compared alcohol use between people with and without confirmed coronary disease (i.e. case-control studies) as well as studies that followed healthy drinkers and abstainers over time to determine their risk of coronary disease (i.e. prospective cohort studies).Both types of studies found that people who consumed alcohol in moderation had lower rates of coronary heart disease compared with abstainers. For example, in a prospective study of 51,529 healthy men, Rimm and colleagues (1991) found that men who consumed 5.1 -30 grams of alcohol (about 0.3 -2 standard drinks 1) per day had a 29 percent lower risk of suffering either nonfatal myocardial infarction or fatal heart disease than did abstainers. Similarly, the drinkers had a 16 percent lower risk of undergoing bypass surgery or angioplasty compared with abstainers. These findings were confirmed in a review of over 50 epidemiological studies, which concluded that compared to total abstinence, consumption of one drink every 1 to 2 days is associated with a 17 percent lower risk of nonfatal myocardial infarction (MaClure 1993). This article reviews the evidence that it is indeed the consumption of alcoholic beverages rather than other unrelated factors that reduces the risk of coronary heart disease. It also presents a recent approach to determine the relationship between alcohol consumption and coronary heart disease. This approach explores alcohol ’s influence on known risk factors for coronary disease as well as other pathways through which alcohol may affect the risk for heart disease.

Palabras clave : Atherosclerosis; Coronary artery; disease; HDL; LDL; Total Cholesterol; Myocardial infarction.