Pre­lim­i­nary find­ings pre­sent­ed at an­nu­al meet­ing of the Eu­ro­pean League Against Rheuma­tism sug­gest that drink­ing al­co­hol may re­duce the risk of de­vel­op­ing sev­er­al types of arthri­tis. The re­sults of this study need to be in­ter­pret­ed with cau­tion, how­ev­er, since no cause and ef­fect re­la­tion­ship was con­firmed.

The case-con­trol study eval­u­at­ed the al­co­hol con­sump­tion habits of 997 new­ly-di­ag­nosed arthri­tis pa­tients and 6874 healthy con­trols re­cruit­ed from a study ex­am­in­ing ve­nous throm­boem­bol­ic dis­ease. Over­all, the arthri­tis pa­tients ex­hib­it­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 70 per cent less al­co­hol con­sump­tion than the con­trols.

Be­tween 53 per cent and 68 per cent of pa­tients re­port­ed drink­ing al­co­hol, de­pend­ing on the type of arthri­tis, while 83 per cent of con­trols drank al­co­hol. This study in­clud­ed sev­er­al types of arthri­tis–rheuma­toid arthri­tis, os­teoarthri­tis, re­ac­tive arthri­tis, pso­ri­at­ic arthri­tis, and spondy­loarthropa­thy–and the as­so­ci­a­tion with al­co­hol con­sump­tion was con­sis­tent af­ter ad­just­ment for age, gen­der, body mass in­dex, and smok­ing sta­tus.

Sev­er­al pre­vi­ous stud­ies have cor­re­lat­ed al­co­hol con­sump­tion with a re­duced risk of rheuma­toid arthri­tis, but this new study is the first to link al­co­hol to oth­er arthrit­ic con­di­tions. Al­though oth­er re­search has re­port­ed a dose-re­sponse re­la­tion­ship be­tween al­co­hol and rheuma­toid arthri­tis, the new find­ings do not show the same re­la­tion­ship. Among these sub­jects, no cor­re­la­tion was seen be­tween the amount or type of al­co­hol con­sumed and the de­vel­op­ment of arthri­tis.

Al­co­hol con­sump­tion has al­so been found to de­crease the pro­gres­sion of rheuma­toid arthri­tis and is as­so­ci­at­ed with a neg­a­tive oc­cur­rence of ex­traar­tic­u­lar man­i­fes­ta­tions of arthri­tis, in­clud­ing serosi­tis, vas­culi­tis, neu­ropa­thy, oc­u­lar le­sions, pul­monary fi­bro­sis, and rheuma­toid nod­ules. (CNN)