It has been known that sleep disordered breathing is associated with high blood pressure and blood vessel disease, and drinking alcohol before bedtime increases the odds of abnormally shallow breathing, according to Dr. Paul E. Peppard and colleagues from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The current study, however, reveals that light-to-moderate drinking affects breathing during sleep no matter when the drinking occurred, researchers reported in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.

The sleep study involved 775 men and 645 women among whom, 36 percent of men and 51 percent of women did not drink whereas 42 percent of men and 41 percent of women reported having less than one drink a day.

The researchers found that the for each additional drink a man regularly took per day, his risk of sleep disordered breathing increased by a quarter after other risk factors were considered including body size, smoking and medications that all can cause breathing problems.

The effect of drinking alcohol was not evident in women and the researchers note that there is evidence to explain why women are less vulnerable to the effects of alcohol on breathing.

Men who drank moderately were more likely to have at least five episodes of interrupted breathing per hour during sleep compared to men who did not drink any alcohol, the study found.

According to the researchers, one in every four men in the U.S. experiences this level of sleep-disordered breathing.

"This 'mild' degree of sleep-disordered breathing is associated with cardiovascular and behavioral outcomes," the authors note.