A daily cocktail may be associated with a lower risk for heart failure. A new study, in the European Heart Journal, followed 14,629 people for 24 years, starting at an average age of 54. It found that moderate drinkers have a lower risk of heart failure than either heavy drinkers or abstainers. There were 2,508 cases of heart failure in the group studied, and the researchers controlled for age, race, smoking, hypertension and other variables. Compared with abstainers, men who drank up to a drink a day — a glass of wine, a 12-ounce beer or a shot of liquor — had a 20 per cent reduced risk, and women a 16 percent reduced risk, of heart failure. The advantage gradually declined with heavier drinking. The senior author, Dr Scott D Solomon, a professor of medicine at Harvard, said that these results were not a reason to start drinking or license to increase alcohol consumption.
Coffee may cut skin cancer risk
Drinking coffee is associated with a slightly reduced risk for skin cancer, a new study has found. Researchers used health and dietary data on 447,357 non-Hispanic whites ages 50 to 71 who were cancer free at the start of the study and followed them for an average of 10 years. Over the course of the study, the researchers identified 2,904 cases of melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer. The more coffee consumed, the lower the risk. Drinking four or more cups of coffee was associated with a 20 per cent risk reduction compared with those who drank none. The association did not hold for decaffeinated coffee or for melanoma in situ, melanoma in its earliest stages that affects only the top layer of skin. While the results may be encouraging for coffee drinkers, “they do not indicate that anyone should change their coffee drinking preferences,” said the lead author, Erikka Loftfield, a graduate student at the Yale School of Public Health. “The most important thing a person can do to reduce risk is to reduce sun and ultraviolet light exposure.”