Not only does a glass of wine taste good, it's also known to have health benefits too. This has been the claim of many previous studies, however, this is being questioned by the latest research of the Radiological Society of North America. The research also investigates how moderate alcohol consumption can actually be dangerous to a person's health.

The researchers conducted the study among 1,925 patients with suspected coronary artery disease (CAD). They did heart scans for these patients and gathered information on their alcohol consumption. The results have shown that the patient's weekly consumption of alcohol has nothing to do with the presence of CAD, regardless if the consumption was light or moderate.

In addition, they also found no associations between alcohol and the presence of coronary atherosclerosis even when they looked at other types of alcohol.

"When we compared consumption between patients who had coronary artery plaques and those who had none, no difference was detected," said study author Dr. Julia Karády from the Heart and Vascular Center at Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary.

"Evaluating the relationship between light alcohol intake (maximum of 14 units per week) and presence of CAD, we again found no association.

"Furthermore, we analyzed the effect of different types of alcohol (beer, wine and hard liquor) on the presence of CAD, but no relationship was found."

Dr. Karady added that while alcohol was not found to have any helpful effects among light drinkers, it also did not show any harmful effects either. She was confident about the accuracy of the study because they have used coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA), a highly accurate method of scanning.

"CCTA is an excellent diagnostic modality to noninvasively depict the coronary wall and identify atherosclerotic lesions," said Dr Karády.

Tags Wine, Heart, Health, Research, Alcohol