Vintners and vasodilators: are French red wines more cardioprotective?

Alcoholic beverages have been consumed by numerous societies for thousands of years, their use often intertwined with religion and culture. Alcohol has both beneficial and detrimental effects on health. A beneficial effect of alcohol was first reported in 1786 by Heberden, who noted relief of angina pectoris by “spirituous cordials” (1). Using observational data, an inverse relationship between alcohol consumption and cardiovascular disease risk was initially published by Cabot in 1904 (2). Since that time, almost 100 geographic, case-control, cohort, and epidemiological studies have reported similar findings (3,4). Concurrent observations have been found in comparisons of arteriographic and postmortem coronary atherosclerosis with reported alcohol consumption. The reduction in cardiovascular risk is generally confined to middle-aged and older individuals. Somewhat less cardioprotection from alcohol is evident in