Is alcohol consumption associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular events in patients treated with statins?

Alcohol consumption has long been associated with cardiovascular (CV) benefit, but it also has adverse potential. Statins are currently widely used for CV prevention. A group of researchers evaluated whether alcohol use is associated with lower CV risk in patients on statins.
Intermountain Medical Center cardiac catheterization laboratory medical records were searched for patients with a prescription history of statin use or non-use and a self-report of alcohol use or non-use. Alcohol and statin prescription data were available together with long-term major adverse CV events (MACE), including death, myocardial infarction, stroke, and heart failure hospitalizations in 1701 patients at primary and 3266 patients at secondary CV risk.
MACE rates were lower for primary prevention alcohol users than non-users not on statins (adjusted hazard ratio [adj-HR] 0.50 (95% CI 0.33, 0.78), but not for those on statins (adj-HR 0.84, CI 0.54, 1.32). MACE rates for secondary prevention were not reduced by alcohol consumption either in statin non-users or users (adj HR 1.18, CI 0.85, 1.64; adj HR 1.08, CI 0.87, 1.35, respectively).
The researchers comment that these findings, together with other recent supportive studies, can help inform personal choices in alcohol consumption and professional society recommendations for CV prevention.
Source: Anderson JL; Le VT; Bair TL; Muhlestein JB; Knowlton KU; Horne BD, “Is alcohol consumption associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular events in patients treated with statins? An observational real-world experience”, Journal of Clinical Medicine, Vol 11, No 16, 2022, Art No 4797, 8pp.