DRINKING in moderation really is good for you. But just how good depends on
your genetic make-up, say researchers in Boston.
Lisa Hines of the Harvard School of Public Health and her colleagues have
found that people with gene variants that make them metabolise ethanol slowly
benefit most. Moderate alcohol consumption greatly reduces these people’s risk
of having a heart attack.
Many epidemiological studies have shown that a few drinks a day cut the risk
of a heart attack, but there has always been the niggling doubt that lifestyle
factors linked to moderate alcohol intake were at work. Now Hines’s…
