Wine Information Council
4 september 2021
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Associations of Alcohol Consumption with Cardiovascular Disease-Related Proteomic Biomarkers: The Framingham Heart Study

BACKGROUND: Alcohol consumption and cardiovascular disease (CVD) have a complex relation.

OBJECTIVES: We examined the associations between alcohol consumption, fasting plasma proteins, and CVD risk.

METHODS: We performed cross-sectional association analyses of alcohol consumption with 71 CVD-related plasma proteins, and also performed prospective association analyses of alcohol consumption and protein concentrations with 3 CVD risk factors (obesity, hypertension, and diabetes) in 6745 Framingham Heart Study (FHS) participants (mean age 49 y; 53% women).

RESULTS: A unit increase in log10 transformed alcohol consumption (g/d) was associated with an increased risk of hypertension (HR = 1.14; 95% CI: 1.04, 1.26; P = 0.007), and decreased risks of obesity (HR = 0.80; 95% CI: 0.71, 0.91; P = 4.6 x 10-4) and diabetes (HR: 0.68; 95% CI: 0.58, 0.80; P = 5.1 x 10-6) in a median of 13-y (interquartile = 7, 14) of follow-up. We identified 43 alcohol-associated proteins in a discovery sample (n = 4348, false discovery rate <0.05) and 20 of them were significant (P <0.05/43) in an independent validation sample (n = 2397). Eighteen of the 20 proteins were inversely associated with alcohol consumption. Four of the 20 proteins demonstrated 3-way associations, as expected, with alcohol consumption and CVD risk factors. For example, a greater concentration of APOA1 was associated with higher alcohol consumption (P = 1.2 x 10-65), and it was also associated with a lower risk of diabetes (P = 8.5 x 10-6). However, several others showed unexpected 3-way associations.

CONCLUSIONS: We identified 20 alcohol-associated proteins in 6745 FHS samples. These alcohol-associated proteins demonstrated complex relations with the 3 CVD risk factors. Future studies with integration of more proteomic markers and larger sample size are warranted to unravel the complex relation between alcohol consumption and CVD risk.

Additional Info

  • Authors

    Sun X.; Ho J. E.; Gao H.; Evangelou E.; Yao C.; Huan T.; Hwang S. J.; Courchesne P.; Larson M. G.; Levy D.; Ma J.; Liu C.

  • Issue

    J Nutr . 2021 Sep 4;151(9):2574-2582.

  • Published Date

    4 september 2021

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