The Association between Moderate Alcoholic Beverage Consumption and Serum Estradiol and Testosterone Levels in Normal Postmenopausal Women: Relationship to the Literature
- 1 January 1992
- journal article
- review article
- Published by Wiley in Alcohol: Clinical and Experimental Research
- Vol. 16 (1), 87-92
- https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1530-0277.1992.tb00642.x
Abstract
The major source of endogenous estrogens in postmenopausal women is the aromatization of androgens to estrogens; because alcohol is known to increase aromatization, the relationship between moderate alcoholic beverage consumption and serum estradiol levels was evaluated in 128 normal postmenopausal women. Alcohol intake was based on a composite of self-report and food record information. Among the 78.8% of women reporting alcohol use, weekly intake was 4.8 +/- 0.6 drinks. Among abstainers, estradiol levels were 100.8 +/- 12.1 pmol/liter, significantly lower than in alcohol users, 162.6 +/- 11.9 pmol/liter. Significant bivariate correlations were found between the logarithm of estradiol and total weekly drinks. In multiple linear regression analyses inclusion of alcohol as a variable increased the amount of explained variation in estradiol. Similar findings were demonstrable when the crude estimator of aromatization, the estradiol:testosterone ratio logarithm was the dependent variable. Together, these findings suggest that moderate alcohol use is an important factor for postmenopausal estrogen status and may offer a partial explanation for the reported protective effect of moderate alcohol consumption with respect to postmenopausal cardiovascular disease risk.Keywords
This publication has 47 references indexed in Scilit:
- A Prospective Study of Moderate Alcohol Consumption and the Risk of Coronary Disease and Stroke in WomenThe New England Journal of Medicine, 1988
- Hip Fracture and the Use of Estrogens in Postmenopausal WomenThe New England Journal of Medicine, 1987
- Alcohol and Breast CancerThe New England Journal of Medicine, 1987
- Moderate Alcohol Consumption and the Risk of Breast CancerThe New England Journal of Medicine, 1987
- Alcohol Consumption and Breast Cancer in the Epidemiologic Follow-up Study of the First National Health and Nutrition Examination SurveyThe New England Journal of Medicine, 1987
- Menopause and the Risk of Coronary Heart Disease in WomenThe New England Journal of Medicine, 1987
- Risk of Localized and Widespread Endometrial Cancer in Relation to Recent and Discontinued Use of Conjugated EstrogensThe New England Journal of Medicine, 1985
- Factors affecting sex hormone levels in postmenopausal womenJournal of Steroid Biochemistry, 1979
- RELATION BETWEEN PLASMA ŒSTRONE AND ŒSTRADIOL AND CLIMACTERIC SYMPTOMSThe Lancet, 1978
- Steroid abnormalities in endometrial and breast carcinoma: A unifying hypothesisJournal of Steroid Biochemistry, 1976