NEW ORLEANS – Abstinence from alcohol on the part of moderate drinkers with atrial fibrillation resulted in clinically meaningful improvement in their arrhythmia in the randomized controlled Alcohol-AF trial, Aleksandr Voskoboinik, MBBS, reported at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology.
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Dr. Aleksandr Voskoboinik
The benefits of abstinence included significant reductions in the AFib recurrence rate, total AFib burden, and symptom severity. And the payoff extended beyond the arrhythmia: The abstinent group also averaged a 12–mm Hg drop in systolic blood pressure and dropped 3 kg of body weight over the course of the 6-month trial, added Dr. Voskoboinik, a cardiologist at the Baker Heart & Diabetes Institute at the University of Melbourne.
“We would conclude that significant reduction in alcohol intake should be considered as part of the lifestyle intervention in moderate drinkers with AFib,” he said.
Some physicians already advise alcohol abstinence for moderate drinkers with AFib, but until now such recommendations were not evidence based. Instead, the guidance was based on extrapolation from the well-established harmful effects of heavy drinking and binge drinking on AFib as well as epidemiologic studies.
“We wanted to provide some evidence base for physicians to say, ‘If I have motivated patients, here’s what’s potentially achievable,’” he explained.
The key word here is “motivated.” Conducting the Alcohol-AF trial made clear that many moderate drinkers with AFib enjoy their beverages more than they hate having their arrhythmia. Indeed, out of 697 moderate-drinking patients with paroxysmal or persistent AFib who were deemed good candidates and were approached about study participation, more than 500 were excluded because they were flat out unwilling to consider abstinence. After Dr. Voskoboinik and his coinvestigators shortened the planned trial duration from 12 months to 6 because so many recruits were unwilling to abstain for a full year, 140 of the initial 697 patients were randomized to abstinence or continuation of their usual consumption. Thirty percent of them had previously undergone AFib ablation.