Wine consumption throughout life is inversely associated with type 2 diabetes risk, but only in overweight individuals: results from a large female French cohort study

Alcohol has previously been shown to have a U-shaped association with type 2 diabetes (T2D) risk, but less is known regarding the specific association with wine. To evaluate for the first time the associations between T2D risk and both baseline wine consumption and trajectories of wine consumption frequency throughout life, estimated using an innovative group-based trajectory modeling strategy. A total of 66,485 women from the French prospective E3N-EPIC cohort were followed between 1993 and 2007; 1,372 incident cases of T2D were diagnosed during the follow-up. Multivariable Cox regression models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95 % confidence intervals (95 % CI) for T2D risk. The average consumption of wine, among alcohol consumers, was 0.81 drinks/day (1 drink = 150 mL). Associations between wine and T2D were restricted to overweight women (P_interaction = 0.0084). Among them, wine consumption was inversely associated with T2D risk (P_trend = 0.0022). A lower risk was observed for overweight women having two or more drinks/day [HR 0.59 (0.43–0.82)] when compared with non-alcohol consumers. Women who started to drink wine early in life (around age 10–15 years) were at a significantly lower risk than lifetime abstainers. In our study, wine drinking was inversely associated with T2D risk but only in overweight women. Our results also suggest a potential beneficial, cumulative effect of moderate wine consumption throughout life for overweight women, who would already be at higher risk of T2D. We encourage other cohort studies with information on wine consumption to investigate these associations.