Wine tied to lower death risk than beer, spirits, study finds

Wine drinkers may face a lower risk of death than people who drink beer or spirits at the same intake levels, according to a large observational study presented at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session in New Orleans.

Researchers tracked 340,924 adults enrolled in the UK Biobank between 2006 and 2022, following participants for an average of more than 13 years. Each person was sorted into one of four alcohol-intake categories — never or occasional, low, moderate or high — based on grams of pure alcohol consumed daily and weekly.

Heavy drinking carried clear risks regardless of the beverage. Compared with never or occasional drinkers, those with high alcohol consumption were 24% more likely to die from any cause, 36% more likely to die from cancer and 14% more likely to die of heart disease, the study found.

But at low and moderate intake levels, the type of alcohol appeared to matter. Moderate wine drinkers had a 21% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease than never or occasional drinkers. Even low intake of spirits, beer or cider, by contrast, was linked to a 9% higher risk of cardiovascular death.

Dr. Zhangling Chen, a professor at the Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University in China, and the study’s senior author, said the findings show that alcohol’s health risks depend on beverage type as well as quantity.

“Our findings help clarify previously mixed evidence,” Dr. Chen said in the college’s release.

Researchers pointed to polyphenols and antioxidants in wine as one possible explanation, along with the tendency of wine drinkers to consume it with meals and to report healthier overall lifestyles. Beer, cider and spirits, they noted, are more often consumed outside of meals and among people with lower-quality diets.

The study, titled “Alcohol Use at Mid-Life and All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality,” has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Julian Braithwaite, president and CEO of the London-based International Alliance for Responsible Drinking — a group backed by major beer, wine and spirits producers — cautioned that the findings are difficult to fully assess.

“It is difficult to fully interpret the findings,” Mr. Braithwaite told Fox News Digital.

Addiction specialists urged similar caution about applying the results broadly. Jessica Steinman, LMFT, CSAT, chief clinical officer for Los Angeles-based No Matter What Recovery, who was not involved in the study, said the research shouldn’t be read as a blanket endorsement of daily drinking.

“Not everybody should have daily consumption of an alcoholic substance,” Ms. Steinman told Fox News Digital, adding that people struggling with substance use should avoid alcohol altogether.

The study’s authors acknowledged several limitations. Because it was observational, it cannot establish that wine causes lower mortality or that other beverages cause higher mortality. Alcohol intake was self-reported only at enrollment, so changes in drinking habits over the following years went unrecorded. UK Biobank participants also tend to be healthier than the general population, which could limit how broadly the results apply.

The researchers called for randomized clinical trials to further test the differences they observed between beverage types.