Drinking any alcohol increases your risk of dementia

 CNN - Drinking any amount of alcohol increases your risk of dementia later in life, according to a new study that challenges prior research findings.

Some research has suggested light drinking — such as fewer than seven drinks a week — may be more neuroprotective than no alcohol at all. Those studies, however, focused on older people and didn’t differentiate between former drinkers and lifelong nondrinkers, thus potentially skewing the results, study authors said.

In the new study, published Tuesday in the journal BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, researchers analyzed how certain genes linked to alcohol might impact how liquor consumption affects the brain.

“The genetic analyses results (showed) that even small amounts of alcohol could increase dementia risk,” said lead study author Anya Topiwala, a senior clinical researcher in the department of psychiatry at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

“This is a fairly complicated study that provides some, but not definitive evidence, that alcohol can harm the brain regardless of how much is consumed,” said neurologist Dr. Richard Isaacson, director of research at the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Florida. Isaacson, who conducts studies on cognitive improvement in people who are genetically at risk for Alzheimer’s disease, was not involved in the new study.