Medicine is subjecting the negative effects of alcohol on body and health to ever greater scrutiny. This should not surprise us, as alcohol is one of the strongest cell toxins that exist. In a recent study, doctors at LMU University Hospital took mobile ECG monitors along to parties of young people who had one principal aim: to drink and be merry.
Yet the science produced by the MunichBREW II study made for sobering reading. It revealed that binge drinking can have a concerning effect on the hearts even of healthy young people in surprisingly many cases, including the development of clinically relevant arrhythmias. The results of the study have just been published in the European Heart Journal .
The team from the Department of Cardiology at LMU University Hospital launched the MunichBREW I study at Munich Oktoberfest in 2015. Back then, the doctors, led by Professor Stefan Brunner and PD Dr. Moritz Sinner, studied the connection between excessive alcohol consumption and cardiac arrhythmias —but only through an electrocardiogram (ECG) snapshot.
Now the scientists wanted to gain a more detailed picture, so they set out with their mobile equipment once again. Their destinations were various small parties attended by young adults with a high likelihood "that many of the partygoers would reach breath alcohol concentrations (BAC) of at least 1.2 grams per kilogram," says Stefan Brunner.
These were the participants of the MunichBREW II study—the world's largest investigation to .
