Consuming more than eight alcoholic drinks a week is associated with brain injuries linked to Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline, a recent study in the journal Neurology suggests.
The analysis looked for links between heavy drinking and brain health. Researchers used autopsy data from the Biobank for Aging Studies at the University of São Paulo Medical School in Brazil collected between 2004 and 2024. The team analyzed data from 1,781 people ages 50 or older at death. The average age at death was 74.9.
With the help of surveys of the deceased’s next of kin, researchers gathered information about the deceased’s cognitive function and alcohol consumption in the three months before their death.
Among participants, 965 never drank, 319 drank up to seven drinks per week (moderate drinking), and 129 had eight or more drinks per week (heavy drinking). Another 368 were former heavy drinkers who had stopped drinking before their last three months of life.
The analysis showed that heavy drinkers and former heavy drinkers, respectively, had 41 percent and 31 percent higher odds of neurofibrillary tangles — clumps of the protein tau that accumulate inside brain neurons and have been associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Moderate, heavy and former heavy drinkers also had a higher risk of hyaline arteriolosclerosis, which thickens the walls of small blood vessels in the brain, impeding blood flow and causing brain damage over time. Though 40 percent of those who never drank had vascular brain lesions, they were more common in moderate (44.6 percent), heavy (44.1 percent) and former heavy drinkers (50.2 percent), the study found.
The association between heavy drinking and vascular brain lesions lingered even after adjusting for factors such as age, sex, heart disease and other health conditions. After adjusting for those factors, the researchers found that heavy drinkers had 133 percent higher odds of developing vascular brain lesions than those who never drank, while former heavy drinkers had 89 percent higher odds. Those categorized as moderate drinkers had 60 percent higher odds than their teetotaling counterparts.
Though moderate and heavy drinkers had similar cognitive scores to those who never drank, former heavy drinkers had lower cognitive scores.
The types of injuries associated with heavy drinking in the research are also linked to long-term issues with memory and thinking, Alberto Fernando Oliveira Justo, a researcher at the University of São Paulo Medical School who was the study’s lead author, said in a news release. “Understanding these effects is crucial for public health awareness and continuing to implement preventive measures to reduce heavy drinking.”
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