This is scientific American 60 second science.

I'm Christopher in D'Artata.

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If you like to wind down with a drink, you've perhaps also rationalized the act

with this oft repeated claim.

You don't have to feel guilty about imbibing a little red or white in small amounts that is good for your

heart.

But a new study finds that alcohol's supposed benefit may in fact only be available to certain people, who happen to have the right genes.

Researchers studied 600 Swedish men and women with heart disease and compared them to some 3,000 healthy volunteers.

They asked the subjects about their drinking, measured their blood cholesterol, and sequenced

each subject's version of a gene that governs the transport of cholesterol to the liver.

Turns out moderate drinking, a couple drinks a day, appeared to lower heart disease risk, overall by 20%.

But subjects who had a specific variant of that

cholesterol transport gene and tipped back a few, they had an 80% reduction in

heart disease risk. And the gene variant isn't protective by itself,

only when combined with booze. The results appear in the journal Alcohol.

Unfortunately, only about 15 percent of us have this variant.

Study author Dogtella of the University of Gothenburg

says that past studies, which found what looks statistically

like a slight heart benefit of moderate drinking in large populations

could actually just be detecting this huge alcohol benefit in the small Lucky Gene group,

while the vast majority of drinkers get no benefit at all.

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