By Anne Harding

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - New research published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society provides more evidence that moderate drinking may be good for older women's brains.

Out of 3,000 women ages 70 to 82 years, those who had one to seven drinks a week had better cognitive function than their teetotaling peers, Dr. David J. Stott of the University of Glasgow and his colleagues found. And after about 3-years of follow-up, the low-to-moderate alcohol drinkers had less decline in their cognitive function than the non-drinkers.

"The size of the effect seems to be equivalent to that of several years of aging," Stott told Reuters Health in an interview. He noted that the findings back up several other studies, including the Women's Health Study, that have found the older brain benefits for moderate drinking.

"The emphasis I think must be on this kind of modest amount of alcohol," Stott added. "If you drink to excess then it's clearly bad for you, it's probably bad for our memory and bad for your brain as well."

Stott and his team evaluated the effects of alcohol consumption and cognitive function in 5,804 older people participating in a clinical trial evaluating cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins. While 42 percent of women and 71 percent of men reported drinking alcohol, the majority drank only moderately. Just 8 percent of women consumed more than the equivalent of one drink daily (the upper limit of alcohol intake recommended by U.S. guidelines), while 17.7 percent of men averaged more than two drinks a day, which is the upper limit recommended for men.

There was no difference in cognitive function at the study's outset between the men who drank and the non-drinkers. But women who drank scored higher than non-drinkers on every test of cognitive function the researchers conducted, such as their speed of information processing and verbal memory.

The relationship remained statistically significant even after Stott and his team accounted for study participants' level of education, whether or not they smoked, their body mass index, and their history of blood vessel disease -- all of which can be related to both cognitive function and drinking.

Over time, alcohol consumption didn't seem to affect men's likelihood of cognitive decline. But again, the women who drank low or moderate amounts of alcohol (one to three drinks or more than three to seven drinks a week, respectively) showed less decline in cognitive function than did nondrinkers.

There are several possible explanations for the gender difference in the effect of alcohol on cognitive function, Stott noted. For example, he explained, women have higher levels of estrogen, which could be protecting their brains.

The researcher emphasized that the amount of alcohol the women in the study were drinking was very modest, and the findings shouldn't be taken to mean that drinking more is better.

SOURCE: Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, December 2008.

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