LOS ANGELES _ Women who drink moderate amounts of alcohol don't gain as much weight in midlife as those who abstain, according to a study released Monday. However, the authors as well as alcohol abuse experts were quick to say that drinking should not be heralded as a new diet nor a path to better health.

The study, to be published Tuesday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, is the first to find that alcohol may curb weight gain in women. Previous research suggested that moderate drinking has no effect on women's weight and contributes to weight gain in men.

Typically, alcohol consumption is not advised for people trying to watch their weight or lose weight. A five-ounce glass of wine contains 125 calories while a 12-ounce regular beer contains 150 calories.

In the study, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston examined data from 19,220 women enrolled in the long-running Women's Health Study. The women, all ages 39 and older at the start of the study and all originally of normal weight, provided information on questionnaires about their alcohol intake as well as other health and lifestyle information over an average of 13 years.

To assess the impact of alcohol only, researchers adjusted for other factors that are known to influence weight, such as smoking, body mass index, age, non-alcohol dietary intake and physical activity. They found that compared with women who abstained from alcohol entirely, women who drank between 15 and 30 grams a day _ the equivalent of a drink or two _ were 30 percent less likely to be overweight or obese at the end of the study period.

Women who consumed five to 14 grams a day _ roughly one-half to one drink _ were 14 percent less likely.

There were too few heavy drinkers (defined as consuming two to three drinks or more a day) to evaluate the effect on body weight of greater quantities of alcohol.

The effects were found for beer, red wine, white wine and spirits, although the strongest association was found for red wine.

It isn't clear what accounts for the association, the authors said. However, they noted that women appear to burn more calories after drinking than men do, which might provide a biological reason for the finding.

But it is also possible that at least some of the observed link between alcohol and midlife slimness is not direct and has to do, instead, with other things drinking women tend to do, the authors added.

For example, women who drank more alcohol in the study consumed fewer calories from other food sources, particularly carbohydrates. The women who drank moderately also were more likely to smoke, were more physically active, had lower body mass indexes at the start of the study and had a less healthy diet.

Still, alcohol appeared to influence weight even when researchers controlled for such factors, the authors said.

Regardless of the reason for the link, the research should not translate into advice for women, said Dr. James C. Garbutt, a professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina's Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies.

"If the message is that by drinking some alcohol you're going to lose weight, that's a potentially complicated and dangerous message," he said.

Women develop alcohol-related liver and brain damage faster than men, he said. Other studies have linked consumption of more than one drink a day to an increased risk of breast cancer.

Moderate wine intake, especially red wine, has been found to have some beneficial effects on cardiovascular health in both women and men. But, Garbutt said, "Alcohol is very much a double-edge sword. For some people, it may have benefit and for others it may have harm."

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