Common, dangerous side effect of binge drinking may be prevented with experimental treatment

Rest easy; researchers believe they may have discovered a means of preventing the “holiday heart syndrome,” which is the term for the abnormal heart rhythms brought on by binge drinking.

This week, they will report their findings at a Chicago American Heart Association meeting.

“There are limited opportunities for celebration around the holidays, which is often accompanied by heavy drinking,” according to lead study author Saugat Khanal, a post-doctoral scholar at The Ohio State University.

He continued, “Unfortunately, this can occasionally drive partygoers—even people who have never had a cardiac issue before—to the hospital with a racing or irregularly beating heart.

The most prevalent kind of arrhythmia, which is the medical term for a heartbeat that is abnormally fast, too slow, or irregular in another way, is atrial fibrillation, or AFib. Heart failure and stroke risk may increase as a result of the illness.

Over 5 million persons in the US have Atrial Fibrillation, and alcohol usage accounts for roughly one-third of new cases of the condition.

Frequent binge drinking, defined as four drinks for women and five for men within two hours, can raise your chance of developing significant arrhythmias, high blood pressure, liver disease, and cancer.

According to Khanal’s team, they have discovered a heart-protective molecule that may stop the heart’s stress-induced protein from activating, which has been demonstrated to cause Atrial Fibrillation.

The researchers attempted to replicate human holiday heart syndrome in mice through their trials. They discovered that the therapy they developed using the chemical Alda-1 decreased the surge in stress proteins linked to binge drinking and the erratic heartbeats that followed.

In the future, Khanal stated, “studies utilizing larger animals will be a direction to translate our exciting findings into clinical applications.”

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