14 DAY TRIAL // Who would've thought that consuming alcohol would be beneficiary for health problems? A study carried out by a team at the University of Sheffield, UK, published online today in the journal Rheumatology confirmed that alcohol consumption reduces the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis.
This is the first time that this effect of drinking alcohol has been shown in humans, though the result actually confirms previous research. Professor of Rheumatology at the University of Sheffield, UK, Gerry Wilson and his team, looked at 873 patients with rheumatoid arthritis and compared them with a control group of 1004 individuals without the illness. The two groups were asked how many times they had drunk alcohol in the month preceding the study; the subjects also filled in a questionnaire, had blood tests and x-rays and their joints were examined by an experienced research nurse.
The results were clear: “We found that patients who had drunk alcohol most frequently had symptoms that were less severe than those who had never drunk alcohol or only drunk it infrequently. X-rays showed there was less damage to joints, blood tests showed lower levels of inflammation, and there was less joint pain, swelling and disability. This is the first time that a dose dependent inverse association between frequency of alcohol consumption and severity of RA has been shown in humans,” Dr James Maxwell said. Dr Maxwell is the first author of the study and a consultant rheumatologist at the Rotherham Foundation NHS Trust, as well as an honorary senior clinical lecturer in the Academic Rheumatology Group at the University of Sheffield.
Scientists found out that people that did not drink alcohol were four times more exposed to developing RA that those who drank alcohol more that ten days a month. The more often they drank, the less risk of developing RA they had: “This finding agrees with the results from previous studies that have shown a decreased susceptibility to developing RA among alcohol drinkers,” says Dr Maxwell.
These conclusions apply regardless of gender or the anti cyclic citrullinated peptide (CCP) positive and negative forms of rheumatoid arthritis. “Anti-CCP antibodies are not present in most ‘normal’ people without arthritis. We know that these antibodies develop prior to the onset of RA, and are probably directly linked to the process which causes RA. Some patients have RA without having anti-CCP antibodies, but we know that the disease is much more severe in patients who do,” explained Dr Maxwell.
Still, scientists do not know for sure why drinking alcohol reduces RA severity and they admit that further studies are necessary, as well as more evaluation parameters, according to AlphaGalileo.
“There is some evidence to show that alcohol suppresses the activity of the immune system, and that this may influence the pathways by which RA develops. We do know that the changes in the immune system that lead to RA happen months and maybe even years before the arthritis actually develops. Once someone has developed RA, it’s possible that the anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects of alcohol may play a role in reducing the severity of symptoms,” Dr Maxwell says.
“Further research is needed to confirm the results of our study and to investigate the mechanisms by which alcohol influences people’s susceptibility to RA and the severity of symptoms. It is also possible that different types of alcoholic drinks may have different effects on RA.”
The author's conclusion is that even though the study's methodology has certain limitations, the results do suggest that alcohol influences RA.