Alcohol May Help Heart Attack Victims

Moderate drinking apparently improves the survival rate of some heart attack victims, researchers said Monday.

A study of guinea pigs found that moderate alcohol consumption after a heart attack cut cell death in half and almost doubled the recovery of muscle function in the heart.

The same occurred in coronary disease patients who went on to have heart attacks, said Dr. Vincent Figueredo, a cardiologist at San Francisco General Hospital and lead author of the University of California-San Francisco study.

“If they’ve been consuming moderate amounts of alcohol on a regular basis, they certainly have a better chance of survival, of having less heart damage,” he said.

Previous studies have shown that alcohol can reduce the incidence of heart attacks in healthy people and have suggested the same for those who have suffered some heart damage.

The UCSF research, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that alcohol achieves the same results as an experimental medical procedure which has been performed in the laboratory.

By briefly interrupting the flow of blood through arteries to the heart just before a heart attack, doctors can sharply cut damage to the organ.

The brief cutoff apparently preconditions the muscle to prepare for a longer stoppage created by a heart attack.

“By having your glass of wine with dinner each night, you set this protection in motion - your heart has a memory of this for the next 24 hours,” he said.

Figueredo emphasized that the benefit applies only to moderate alcohol usage, defined as one drink a day for a woman and two for a man.

American Heart Association spokesman Phil Kibak cautioned against heart patients seizing on the study to begin drinking.

“We don’t want to go out and tell people to start drinking alcohol if they don’t drink already,” he said. “But if you already drink, it probably means that drinking moderately after a heart attack may beneficial.”