Alcohol consumption not linked to ventricular arrhythmias, but may precipitate SCD

Australia: Total alcohol intake had no connection with VA in this new mostly white cohort research, but SCD had a U-shaped correlation.

This study was conducted by Samuel J. Tu and the team and the data were published in the journal Heart Rhythm on 20th December 2021.

Although prior research has shown a U-shaped link between alcohol and sudden cardiac death (SCD), there is no information on the impact of alcohol in incident ventricular arrhythmias (VAs). The goal of this study was to assess correlations between total and beverage-specific alcohol intake and incident VA and SCD by using data from the UK Biobank.

For this study, the alcohol intake reported at baseline was computed as 8 g of alcohol per week in UK standard drinks. Hospitalization and death records were used to analyze outcomes. In multivariate Cox regression models, alcohol intake was modeled as limited cubic splines and compensated for regression dilution bias.

The key findings of this study are:

1. Researchers followed 408,712 middle-aged people (52.1 % of whom were female) for an average of 11.5 years.

2. There were 1733 incident VA occurrences and 2044 SCDs. There was no evident relationship between incident VA and total alcohol intake.

3. Although increasing the use of spirits was related to an increased risk of VA, no other significant beverage-specific relationships were found.

4. Total alcohol intake was shown to have a U-shaped connection with SCD, with 26 drinks per week being linked with the lowest risk.

5. Increased consumption of beer, cider, and spirits was related to an increase in SCD risk, but increased consumption of red and white wine was associated with a decrease in risk.

In conclusion, even though according to the study there was no apparent link seen between total alcohol consumption and incident VA, additional research using precisely characterized VA and SCD episodes is needed to give more understanding into these contradictory findings.

Reference:

Tu, S. J., Gallagher, C., Elliott, A. D., Linz, D., Pitman, B. M., Hendriks, J. M. L., Lau, D. H., Sanders, P., & Wong, C. X. (2021). Alcohol consumption and risk of ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death: An observational study of 408,712 individuals. In Heart Rhythm. Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrthm.2021.09.040