Millwood IY, et al. - In the prospective study, researchers recruited over 500,000 adults from ten regions of China between June 25, 2004, and July 15, 2008, to determine the association of cardiovascular risk with genotype-predicted mean alcohol intake in males vs females. They found that 33% of men reported drinking alcohol most weeks, mainly as spirits, compared with just 2% of women. They noted a U-shaped association of self-reported alcohol intake with the incidence of ischemic stroke (n=14,930), intracerebral hemorrhage (n=3,496), and acute myocardial infarction (n=2,958) among males. They found that men who reported drinking about 100 g of alcohol weekly (1-2 drinks/day) were at lower risk than non-drinkers or heavier drinkers for all three diseases. Genetic epidemiology revealed that the seemingly protective effects of moderate intake of alcohol against stroke may be largely non-causal. Overall, alcohol consumption increased the risk of blood pressure and stroke uniformly, and seemed to have a little net effect on myocardial infarction risk in this study.