The Forgetful Drunk

For years we have heard about the health benefits of moderate drinking. Now there's a study that says even a little alcohol on a regular basis can be dangerous.

The study, by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, shows that low to moderate drinking may cause a loss of brain tissue in middle-age people.

The researchers also found that such alcohol consumption does not lower the risk of a stroke - contradicting findings from previous studies.

"I think this is an interesting study because people talk about the beneficial effects of alcohol intake on cardiovascular disease and they try to extend that to stroke," said the study's lead researcher, Dr. Jingzhong Ding, a research associate at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins. "Some studies find beneficial effects, but ours didn't."

Heavy drinking is known to raise the risk of both brain atrophy and stroke, but findings on the effects of low to moderate drinking have varied.

Ding and his colleagues evaluated 1,909 patients, ages 55 and older, from North Carolina and Mississippi who were participants in a study on the buildup of plaque in the arteries. Researchers used information collected between 1987 and 1989 and followed up every three years until 1995.

Using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRIs, researchers measured the patients' ventricular and sulcal areas - voids of the brain containing only cerebrospinal fluid. Increased ventricular and sulcal size indicates a reduction in brain tissue, or atrophy.

The findings showed that both voids grew larger the more people drank.

Ding said researchers cannot make a definitive cause-and-effect link between drinking and brain atrophy because the MRIs were done only once during the study and because they found only a small reduction in tissue.