Alcoholic Myopathy in Heart and Skeletal Muscle

Abstract

EXCESSIVE consumption of alcohol was known to be related to liver disease before the time of Hippocrates, but the recognition of alcohol-related diseases that affect cardiac and skeletal muscle is only about a century old. Alcohol use was suggested as a contributing factor to heart disease as early as 1855,¹ and in 1884, Bollinger,² in a discussion about cardiac hypertrophy in habitual beer drinkers, noted that "with excessive habitual use of beer, one has to take into account the direct effect of alcohol on the heart." Ten years later Steell³ reflected, "Not only do I now recognize alcoholism as one . . .