Middle-aged people who have never drunk alcohol can cut their risk of heart disease sharply by taking to the bottle — especially if it contains wine.

US doctors have found that the new drinkers rarely overdid it, stuck to safe limits and cut their risk of heart disease by 38 per cent in four years.

Although drinking moderately has been shown to have benefits in many studies, doctors have until now always been unwilling to recommend non-drinkers to take it up. The new results may embolden them.

A team from the Medical University of South Carolina looked at heart disease in 7,697 men and women aged 45 to 64, all of whom started out as non-drinkers. Of these, 6 per cent became moderate drinkers during the ten-year study. Typically this amounted to two drinks a day for men and one for women.

After an average of four years the new drinkers were found to have a 38 per cent lower chance of developing heart or artery disease than those who continued to spurn alcohol. New drinkers who consumed only wine appeared to benefit most, according to the findings published in The American Journal of Medicine. Their risk of a cardiovascular event such as a heart attack or stroke was 68 per cent lower than non-drinkers. People who preferred other drinks, such as beer or spirits, had an advantage over teetotallers, but not to a significant degree.

There was no overall effect on death rates, probably because the study was too short to detect any decline through heart disease, or any increase because of cancer.

Dana King, who led the team, wrote in the paper: “A substantial cardiovascular benefit from adopting moderate alcohol drinking in middle age appears supported by the study.

“The findings suggest that, for carefully selected individuals, a ‘heart-healthy diet’ may include limited alcohol consumption even among individuals who have not included alcohol previously.”

Researchers saw differences in cholesterol level and blood pressure between the drinkers and non-drinkers. Levels of “bad” low-density lipoprotein cholesterol were significantly lower among new drinkers, and levels of “good” high-density lipoprotein cholesterol higher.

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