Abstract
Background: There have been no human prospective randomized studies of the amount of alcohol that can induce hepatic steatosis.
Methods: Thirty-two healthy women and twelve healthy men (34 ± 9 years of age) were randomized to consume 150 ml of red wine/day for women (16 g ethanol/day) or double that amount for men (33 g ethanol/day), or to alcohol abstention for 90 days. Participants underwent proton-nuclear magnetic-resonance spectroscopy for measurement of hepatic triglyceride content (HTGC). Blood samples for assessment of cardiovascular risk were drawn before and after the intervention.
Results: After exclusion of three subjects with steatosis at baseline a trend towards increased HTGC was apparent for red wine (before median: 1.1%, range 0.2–3.9%, after median: 1.1%, range 0.5–5.2 %, P = 0.059) a difference that was statistically significant compared with abstainers (p = 0.02). However, no subject developed hepatic steatosis. Low–density lipoprotein (LDL)-cholesterol was lowered by red wine (–0.3 mmol/l, SE –0.1, 95% CI –0.6 to –0.04).
Conclusions: Moderate consumption of red wine during three months increased HTGC in subjects without steatosis at baseline. However, since not a single participant developed steatosis we suggest that the threshold of alcohol consumption to define nonalcoholic fatty liver disease should not be lower than the amount in our study.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT00954434.
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Declaration of interest: The authors state no conflict of interest and have received no payment in preparation of this manuscript. Fredrik H Nystrom had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.