Alcohol and cardiovascular disease : The Russian paradox

For many years the relatively low mortality from coronary heart disease in France was referred to by epidemiologists and public health experts as the "French paradox", as the population was regarded as having a diet high in saturated fats. One "answer" to this apparent contradiction has been that the historically high level of alcohol consumption in France has exerted a counter-balancing cardioprotective effect. However, the same does not appear to be the case in Russia. One of the key distinguishing features of the Russian health crisis over the past 30 years has been the extraordinary fluctuations in cardiovascular disease mortality. These have followed almost exactly the fluctuations in acute alcohol poisoning. In this seminar I will explore the potential role of alcohol as an explanation of the very high rates of cardiovascular mortality in Russia, and how recent studies we have done throw more light on the underlying biological mechanisms that link alcohol to this major class of non-communicable disease