Alcohol harder on women's hearts, researchers say

CHICAGO (UPI): A woman's heart is more sensitive to alcohol than a man's heart, researchers say.

In a study of alcoholics, researchers found women who consumed just 60 percent of the alcohol that men drank had the same level of heart muscle damage. The scientists found that often the heart muscle is seriously compromised even before the alcoholics are aware of symptoms, said Dr. Emanuel Rubin, chairman of the department of pathology, anatomy and cell biology at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

In a report published in Wednesday's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Rubin studied 50 alcoholic women and 100 alcoholic men. They had been drinking excessively for more than 15 years; their average age was 39; they came to the clinic for help in fighting their alcoholism.

"This study wasn't among social drinkers. These were heavy- duty, industrial strength alcoholics," Rubin told UPI. The alcoholic woman's average consumption was about nine standard drinks of whiskey or about a quart of wine a day.

"We found that alcohol is toxic to all the striated muscles, that is, heart and skeletal muscles," said Rubin, director of the Alcoholism Research Center, which is sponsored by the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse.

Rubin and his co-author, Dr. Alvaro Urbano-Marquez, chairman of the department of internal medicine and cardiology at the Hospital Clinic of the University of Barcelona, Spain, specially looked at how alcoholics' hearts and skeletal muscles compared by gender. They also compared them to nonalcoholics.

Rubin had previously reported that men's hearts and skeletal muscles were adversely affected by alcohol abuse.

Now he found that when women drank 60 percent of the alcohol of male alcohol abusers, the women suffered the same results as the men: In each group, one-third of the alcoholics were suffering clinical cardiomyopathy, a degeneration of the heart muscle, that can lead to death from congestive heart failure. The researchers also looked at alcoholic myopathy muscle weakness and saw similar loss of strength.

Dr. Thomas Pearson, associate professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia University, said, Rubin's paper points out that alcohol itself has a direct toxic effect on the heart and other muscles; the research also shows researchers that women metabolize alcohol differently than men, identifying a need for further studies.

Rubin said his subjects have no relationship to social drinkers. He and Pearson noted studies which show that a bit of daily alcohol consumption might be beneficial in preventing coronary artery disease.

The new research was funded by the Spanish government, Rubin said, and was conducted at the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona. Rubin said the homogeneous population there allowed researchers to more easily match alcoholics and non-alcoholics because of similarities in race, socioeconomic status, lack of drug use and other factors.

Rubin said an estimated 2 million women and 12 million men are alcoholics in the United States.

He said the finding could give physicians clues to their patients habits. If a relatively young person showed signs of cardiomyopathy, Rubin said the physician should take a careful medical history to determine if the person may be concealing a serious drinking problem.

Pearson said this finding "gives us the opportunity to intervene and counsel people who may be abusing alcohol to keep them from further damaging their hearts."