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Morning News

Harvard Studies Show Moderate Drinking is Good for One in Six Caucasians

Aired February 22, 2001 - 10:36 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: You have no doubt heard this before: A drink or two a day can be good for your heart. But now, Harvard researchers have found that that advice can be especially good for some of us.

Medical news correspondent Elizabeth Cohen explains.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You may have reason to celebrate if you're one of the lucky few.

A new study from the Harvard School of Public Health shows that one out of six Caucasian people has a particular genetic makeup that makes drinking alcohol in moderation particularly good for them.

In the study, people with this genetic variation, when they had a drink or two a day, had a 77 percent decreased risk of having a heart attack compared to other people who drank the same amount.

So can you go to your doctor and find out if you're the one in six? Right now, that's not practical. But with the recent mapping of the human genome, geneticists predict that this kind of genetic testing may become routine in the future.

DR. ROBERT ECKEL, AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION: In the office practice of 10 to 20 years from now, we may be able to "prescribe," quote/unquote, alcohol in a effective way in some people more so than others.

COHEN: In the study, published in the "New England Journal of Medicine," one out of six people, because of their genes, metabolize alcohol slowly.

Researchers theorize the more time alcohol spends in the body, the more time it has to exert its good effects: to raise the level of good cholesterol in the blood stream, and make blood less likely to clot, which reduces the risk of a heart attack.

This genetic variation that causes slow alcohol metabolism is very rare among people of Asian or African decent.

(on camera): While slow metabolizers seem to be the greatest benefit from alcohol, studies show that everyone benefits to one extent or another. Still, doctors have been low to put this information to use, fearing that suggesting even just a drink or two a day could lead to alcoholism.

ECKEL: Alcohol prescriptions are not yet being written in doctors offices. So there is a note of caution here.

COHEN (voice-over): Alcohol aside, geneticists say, this kind of a study is the wave of the future, making decisions about what's best for patients by looking into their genes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Now, you might think, if one to two glasses a day is good for my heart, then more must be better, but it doesn't work that way: More is not better. In fact, the opposite is true: Drinking too much will damage your health, you heart, your speech -- devastating.

HARRIS: Well, it hurts other things -- brains and all that sort of stuff. You know, we deal with that a -- quite a bit here.

But listen, let me ask you something: Does it matter, like, what kind of alcohol it is that you get? Does it change it any way when it gets inside the body?

COHEN: You know, it's so interesting: One of the important things about this study is that they figured out that it really doesn't matter. There have been lots of theories that perhaps wine, especially red wine, was better, because there's something called tannins in red wine, which is what gives it its color. And there were other theories that maybe this kind of alcohol's better, that kind of alcohol's better, but in fact they found alcohol is alcohol, and it indeed is the alcohol in these drinks, not something else. So it really doesn't matter what you drink.

HARRIS: Yes, there was the thinking beforehand that red wine going to be...

COHEN: Exactly, and seems to, perhaps, maybe not be true.

HARRIS: Interesting -- well, we'll see a few people at the bars this afternoon.

COHEN: That's right.

HARRIS: We'll go check the -- check the atrium after lunch.

All right, Elizabeth Cohen, thanks much, see you later on.

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