Alcohol and Stroke

Stroke risk increases for one hour after drinking.
ABC News (7/15, Carollo) reported, "Happy hour may not be so happy afterward, as" Harvard "researchers have found that stroke risk is more than twice as high the hour immediately after consuming alcohol, even after as little as one drink." But, "health experts say, that's no reason to put down the wine glass or beer mug, because there's a significant body of research showing that moderate alcohol intake can be good for you." What's more, some have "questioned the study's methodology," maintaining that "asking study participants to remember certain things is 'notorious for introducing recall bias.'"
The authors of the study also conceded that "conclusive evidence about the association between alcohol consumption and the acute risk of stroke would require a long-term clinical trial," HealthDay (7/15, Reinberg) reported. "Nonetheless, these results suggest that there is an acute elevated risk of ischemic stroke that may be offset by the potential beneficial effects of long-term moderate alcohol consumption," explained lead investigator Elizabeth Mostofsky. "But the findings may not apply to patients with severe stroke," the team concluded after interviewing "390 patients about three days after their stroke."
They eventually discovered that "relative risk of ischemic stroke rapidly fell off from 2.3-fold higher at one hour after consumption (P=0.002) to 1.6-fold at two hours (P=0.05) and back to baseline by three hours," MedPage Today (7/15, Phend) reported. "But at 24 hours after taking a drink, stroke risk was actually 30% lower than during periods when there was no alcohol consumption (P=0.02)," according to the paper in Stroke.