Wine Information Council

Over the past several decades, the prevalence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) has nearly doubled, and alcohol has played a major role in the incidence of much of it. Alcohol has also been attributed in deaths due to infectious diseases, intentional and unintentional injuries, digestive diseases, and several other non-communicable diseases, including cancer. The economic costs of alcohol-associated health outcomes are significant at the individual as well as the country level. Risks due to alcohol consumption increase for most cardiovascular diseases, including hypertensive heart disease, cardiomyopathy, atrial fibrillation and flutter, and stroke. The widespread message for over 30 years has been to promote the myth that alcohol prolongs life, chiefly by reducing the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). Lack of universal advice and stringent policy measures have contributed towards increased uptake and easy availability of alcohol. The WHO has called for a 10% relative reduction in the harmful use of alcohol between 2013-2025. However, lack of investment in proven alcohol control strategies, as well as persistence of misinformation and industry interference, have hindered the efforts of public health professionals to make sufficient progress in reducing alcohol related harms and death.

BACKGROUND: Alcohol harms are rising globally, and alcohol policies, where they exist, are weak or under-developed. Limited progress has been made since the formulation of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Global Strategy in 2010. WHO is seeking to accelerate progress in implementing international efforts to reduce the harmful use of alcohol. The threat to global health posed by tobacco is well understood by policy communities and populations globally; by contrast alcohol is much less so, despite available evidence. THE COMPETITION FOR EPISTEMIC AUTHORITY: Global alcohol corporations have sought to become trusted sources of advice for policy makers and consumers, while continuing to grow their markets. Evidence-informed public health messaging faces formidable competition from transnational corporations as the worlds of corporate and political communications, social and mainstream media become increasingly linked, presenting new opportunities for corporate actors to shape global health governance. Alcohol messaging that uses means of persuasion tied to industry agendas does not tell a clear story about commercial determinants of health, and does not contribute to health improvement. On the contrary, the basic tenets of an evidence-informed population-based approach are denied and the policy measures supported by high quality evidence are being opposed, because they are inimical to commercial interests. A David and Goliath metaphor for this state of affairs, which seems to fit at first glance, may unwittingly reinforce the status quo. CONCLUSION: Public opinion on alcohol and policy issues varies across time and place and can be influenced by dedicated public health interventions. Alcohol marketing dominates people's thinking about alcohol because we currently allow this to happen. Greater ambition is needed in developing countermarketing and other interventions to promote evidence-informed ideas with the public. Alcohol policies need to be further developed, and implemented more widely, in order to arrest the growing burden of alcohol harms across the world.

Alcohol consumption is associated with multiple diseases and might contribute to vulnerability to SARS-CoV-2 infection. It can also catalyze exacerbations of mental and organic illnesses and predispose to behaviors with an increased risk of infection, severity of disease but also independently of sociopathic behavior and violence.

Globally, millions of premature deaths from excessive alcohol consumption occur each year. This paper discusses the effects of increased alcohol consumption and the most important consequences on the health of the population during the social isolation and lockdown during current COVID-19 pandemic.

Existing data have described benefits and drawbacks of alcohol consumption on cardiovascular diseases (CVD), but no research has evaluated its association with the cardiovascular health (CVH) score proposed by the American Heart Association. Here, we conducted a cross-sectional analysis on the Kardiovize cohort (Brno, Czech Republic), to investigate the relationship between alcohol consumption and CVH. We included 1773 subjects (aged 25-64 years; 44.2% men) with no history of CVD. We compared CVD risk factors, CVH metrics (i.e., BMI, healthy diet, physical activity level, smoking status, blood pressure, fasting glucose, and total cholesterol) and CVH score between and within several drinking categories. We found that the relationship between drinking habits and CVH was related to the amount of alcohol consumed, drinking patterns, and beverage choices. Heavy drinkers were more likely to smoke tobacco, and to report diastolic blood pressure, fasting glucose, triglycerides, and low-density lipoprotein (LDL)-cholesterol at higher level than non-drinkers. Among drinkers, however, people who exclusively drank wine exhibited better CVH than those who exclusively drank beer. Although our findings supported the hypothesis that drinking alcohol was related to the CVH in general, further prospective research is needed to understand whether the assessment of CVH should incorporate information on alcohol consumption.