Beer consumption and homocysteine

Hyperhomocysteinemia has received increasing attention during the past decade and has joined hypertension, obesity, dyslipemia, smoking, and diabetes mellitus as an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Chronic alcohol ingestion has also been associated with increased homocysteine levels. However, drinking beer may have a special health benefit not attributable to other alcohol-containing beverages. Contrary to wine, little is known about potential cardio protective effect of beer whose high content of vitamins B may have beneficial effects on homocysteine metabolism. One of the first studies, which showed an inverse relation between beer consumption and homocysteine levels, were designed by our group in patients with diabetes mellitus type 2. Our study ' s hypothesis is based on previous studies. Folate, vitamins B12 and B6 were assessed in chronic alcoholics and healthy volunteers. Mean serum homocysteine was twice as high in chronic alcoholics than in non-drinkers. However, beer consumers had signifi-cantly lower concentrations of homocysteine compared with drinkers of wine or spirits. Other cross-sectional population study with a high amount of patients has been performed with residents of Pilsen (Czech Republic). By categories of beer intake, subjects with intake of 1 l daily or more had signifi-cantly lower tHcy and higher folate concentrations than those that reporting lower daily beer intake. However, some studies have not demonstrated this inverse association. The conflicting results may derive in part from confounding by the interaction of alcoholic beverage consumed. Other confounding factors may play a role in all studies, changing direction of the results secondary to bias such as race-ethnicity, genetic background, age, cigarette smoking, and amount of ethanol. As we can see interaction in different factors present in some type of patient could modify the results of previous and further studies in this topic area to relate beer consumption and homocysteine.