Alcohol consumption and visceral fat: new study by Professor Fredrik Karpe confirms link

Many of us understand anecdotally the relationship between regular alcohol consumption and body fat – the concept of the “beer belly” being one such example. But until recently, that link had never been rigorously proven by scientists.

Pembroke Fellow and Oxford Professor of Metabolic Medicine, Fredrik Karpe, has been working to change that. In the first study of its size, published last month in the International Journal of Obesity, Professor Karpe and two other Oxford scientists investigated the relationship between alcohol consumption and visceral fat mass across more than 5,000 individuals.

Unlike previous studies, often small in scale, focussed on extreme drinking, or reliant on imprecise measurement methods, the Oxford team used DXA-scanning and a structured questionnaire to gather information on regular alcohol consumption from a cohort of 5,761 men and women from the Oxford Biobank. The study found a clear relationship between alcohol intake and intra-abdominal fat in both men and women.

Professor Karpe shares: "This is the first time it has been convincingly shown that higher-level drinking leads to visceral fat accumulation, which is important because the visceral fat is the type of fat that associates with some of the problematic effects of being overweight, such as getting type 2 diabetes and heart attacks. The good news is that staying within the safe drinking limits showed no association with visceral fat accumulation.”

Professor Karpe’s research has attracted wide scientific and media attention, including a feature piece and interview in The Times, available here.

Read the full journal article here.