Cutting out alcohol may reduce atrial fibrillation episodes

(Reuters Health) - For people with atrial fibrillation, abstinence from alcohol ...

- For people with atrial fibrillation, abstinence from alcohol may make the heart beat better.

While atrial fibrillation , or Afib, reappeared in 73% of the people who averaged 13 drinks per week, the rate dropped to 53% among patients in the abstinence group - who weren’t supposed to drink at all but, on average, consumed two drinks weekly. “Alcohol is not only a marker of increased risk of AF , but it seems to be also a real risk factor for AF, because if we ‘treat’ , we have a significant reduction in both the AF burden and the recurrence of AF,” Dr. Renato Lopes, a professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, who wasn’t involved in the study, said in an email.

In fact, the researchers were originally planning to follow patients for 12 months, but they couldn’t find enough volunteers willing to abstain from alcohol for that long. At the six-month mark, the hearts of the drinkers spent 1.2% of the time in Afib versus 0.5% of the time among volunteers assigned to abstinence.

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