Sun X, Ho JE, Gao H, et al. - In order to determine the correlations between alcohol consumption, fasting plasma proteins, and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk, researchers herein performed cross-sectional association analyses of alcohol consumption with 71 CVD-related plasma proteins, as well as carried out prospective association analyses of alcohol consumption and protein concentrations with 3 CVD risk factors (obesity, hypertension, and diabetes) in 6,745 Framingham Heart Study (FHS) participants (mean age 49 y; 53% women). A total of 20 alcohol-associated proteins were identified in these FHS participants. Eighteen of the 20 proteins were noted to be inversely linked with alcohol consumption. Findings revealed complex relations of these alcohol-associated proteins with the 3 CVD risk factors. Three-way associations were demonstrated by four of the 20 proteins, as expected, with alcohol consumption and CVD risk factors. For instance, a higher concentration of APOA1 was linked with higher alcohol consumption, and it was also linked with a lower risk of diabetes. However, there were several others that exhibited unexpected 3-way associations.