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Are there non-linear relationships between alcohol consumption and long-term health?: a systematic review of observational studies employing approaches to improve causal inference
BACKGROUND: Research has long found ‘J-shaped’ relationships between alcohol consumption and certain health outcomes, indicating a protective effect of moderate consumption. However, methodological limitations in most studies hinder causal inference. This review aimed to identify all observational s...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8759175/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35027007 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12874-021-01486-5 |
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author | Visontay, Rachel Sunderland, Matthew Slade, Tim Wilson, Jack Mewton, Louise |
author_facet | Visontay, Rachel Sunderland, Matthew Slade, Tim Wilson, Jack Mewton, Louise |
author_sort | Visontay, Rachel |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Research has long found ‘J-shaped’ relationships between alcohol consumption and certain health outcomes, indicating a protective effect of moderate consumption. However, methodological limitations in most studies hinder causal inference. This review aimed to identify all observational studies employing improved approaches to mitigate confounding in characterizing alcohol–long-term health relationships, and to qualitatively synthesize their findings. METHODS: Eligible studies met the above description, were longitudinal (with pre-defined exceptions), discretized alcohol consumption, and were conducted with human populations. MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Embase and SCOPUS were searched in May 2020, yielding 16 published manuscripts reporting on cancer, diabetes, dementia, mental health, cardiovascular health, mortality, HIV seroconversion, and musculoskeletal health. Risk of bias of cohort studies was evaluated using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale, and a recently developed tool was used for Mendelian Randomization studies. RESULTS: A variety of functional forms were found, including reverse J/J-shaped relationships for prostate cancer and related mortality, dementia risk, mental health, and certain lipids. However, most outcomes were only evaluated by a single study, and few studies provided information on the role of alcohol consumption pattern. CONCLUSIONS: More research employing enhanced causal inference methods is urgently required to accurately characterize alcohol–long-term health relationships. Those studies that have been conducted find a variety of linear and non-linear functional forms, with results tending to be discrepant even within specific health outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION: PROSPERO registration number CRD42020185861. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12874-021-01486-5. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8759175 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-87591752022-01-18 Are there non-linear relationships between alcohol consumption and long-term health?: a systematic review of observational studies employing approaches to improve causal inference Visontay, Rachel Sunderland, Matthew Slade, Tim Wilson, Jack Mewton, Louise BMC Med Res Methodol Research BACKGROUND: Research has long found ‘J-shaped’ relationships between alcohol consumption and certain health outcomes, indicating a protective effect of moderate consumption. However, methodological limitations in most studies hinder causal inference. This review aimed to identify all observational studies employing improved approaches to mitigate confounding in characterizing alcohol–long-term health relationships, and to qualitatively synthesize their findings. METHODS: Eligible studies met the above description, were longitudinal (with pre-defined exceptions), discretized alcohol consumption, and were conducted with human populations. MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Embase and SCOPUS were searched in May 2020, yielding 16 published manuscripts reporting on cancer, diabetes, dementia, mental health, cardiovascular health, mortality, HIV seroconversion, and musculoskeletal health. Risk of bias of cohort studies was evaluated using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale, and a recently developed tool was used for Mendelian Randomization studies. RESULTS: A variety of functional forms were found, including reverse J/J-shaped relationships for prostate cancer and related mortality, dementia risk, mental health, and certain lipids. However, most outcomes were only evaluated by a single study, and few studies provided information on the role of alcohol consumption pattern. CONCLUSIONS: More research employing enhanced causal inference methods is urgently required to accurately characterize alcohol–long-term health relationships. Those studies that have been conducted find a variety of linear and non-linear functional forms, with results tending to be discrepant even within specific health outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION: PROSPERO registration number CRD42020185861. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12874-021-01486-5. BioMed Central 2022-01-14 /pmc/articles/PMC8759175/ /pubmed/35027007 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12874-021-01486-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Visontay, Rachel Sunderland, Matthew Slade, Tim Wilson, Jack Mewton, Louise Are there non-linear relationships between alcohol consumption and long-term health?: a systematic review of observational studies employing approaches to improve causal inference |
title | Are there non-linear relationships between alcohol consumption and long-term health?: a systematic review of observational studies employing approaches to improve causal inference |
title_full | Are there non-linear relationships between alcohol consumption and long-term health?: a systematic review of observational studies employing approaches to improve causal inference |
title_fullStr | Are there non-linear relationships between alcohol consumption and long-term health?: a systematic review of observational studies employing approaches to improve causal inference |
title_full_unstemmed | Are there non-linear relationships between alcohol consumption and long-term health?: a systematic review of observational studies employing approaches to improve causal inference |
title_short | Are there non-linear relationships between alcohol consumption and long-term health?: a systematic review of observational studies employing approaches to improve causal inference |
title_sort | are there non-linear relationships between alcohol consumption and long-term health?: a systematic review of observational studies employing approaches to improve causal inference |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8759175/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35027007 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12874-021-01486-5 |
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