Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
This commentary refers to ‘Urinary tartaric acid as a biomarker of wine consumption and cardiovascular risk: the PREDIMED trial’, by I. Domínguez-López et al., https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehae804. We read the paper by Domínguez-López et al.1 with great interest. The study aimed to address concerns with self-reported wine consumption by using urinary tartaric acid as an objective biomarker of wine intake. While the study concluded that moderate wine consumption, as measured by urinary tartaric acid, was associated with improved cardiovascular health, there are several methodological concerns which call into question the implications of the findings. We discuss our concerns in the context of assuming that urinary tartaric acid levels are reflective of wine consumption and not significantly influenced by diet, as was done by the authors.1 Assuming this, the authors have compared those with urinary tartaric acid levels < 1 µg/mL, which likely includes a significant number of alcohol abstainers, including former drinkers, to those who currently consume wine.
Farkouh et al. (Thu,) studied this question.