ReviewVascular health and risk management2006
Effect of alcohol on risk of coronary heart disease and stroke: causality, bias, or a bit of both?
Review in Vascular health and risk management, 2006. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 49 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
49 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 106 citations in OpenAlex.
- Alcohol consumption and its association with cancer, cardiovascular, liver and brain diseases: a systematic review of Mendelian randomization studies.Frontiers in epidemiology · 2024Pooled it
- The relationship between different dimensions of alcohol use and the burden of disease-an update.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2017Pooled it
- Prevalence and correlates of stroke among older adults in Ghana: Evidence from the Study on Global AGEing and adult health (SAGE).PloS one · 2019Trial
- Association between alcoholic beverage consumption and cerebral small vessel disease burden.The journal of prevention of Alzheimer's disease · 2025Article
- High-density lipoprotein cholesterol, particles and subspecies and the risk of chronic kidney disease: The PREVEND prospective study.Lipids in health and disease · 2025Article
- Sociodemographic factors associated with alcohol consumption among men in Gabon: insights from the Gabon demographic and health survey of 2019-2021.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Alcohol and mortality in Mexico: prospective study of 150 000 adults.The Lancet. Public health · 2024Article
- Alcohol Consumption and Cardiovascular Disease: A Narrative Review of Evolving Perspectives and Long-Term Implications.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Alcohol Consumption, High-Density Lipoprotein Particles and Subspecies, and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease: Findings from the PREVEND Prospective Study.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Article
- Interaction between depressive symptoms and obesity-related anthropometric measures on multimorbidity among community-dwelling older adults: evidence from India.BMC public health · 2024Article
- Alcohol Consumption and Cerebral Small- and Large-Vessel Diseases: A Mendelian Randomization Analysis.Journal of atherosclerosis and thrombosis · 2024Article
- Prospective study design and data analysis in UK Biobank.Science translational medicine · 2024Review
- Moderate alcohol consumption on the risk of stroke in the Million Veteran Program.BMC public health · 2023Article
- Alcohol intake and cause-specific mortality: conventional and genetic evidence in a prospective cohort study of 512 000 adults in China.The Lancet. Public health · 2023Article
- Characterization of Carbohydrates, Amino Acids, Viscosity, and Antioxidant Capacity in Rice Wines Made in Saitama, Japan, with Different Sake Rice.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- The ability of the geriatric nutritional risk index to predict the risk of heart diseases in Korean adults: a Korean Genome and Epidemiology Study cohort.Frontiers in nutrition · 2023Article
- Association between usual alcohol consumption and risk of falls in middle-aged and older Chinese adults.BMC geriatrics · 2022Article
- Expecting the best or fearing the worst: Discrepancies between self-rated health and frailty in an ageing Irish population.British journal of health psychology · 2022Article
- Risk Factors of Incident Lung Cancer in Patients with Non-Cystic Fibrosis Bronchiectasis: A Korean Population-Based Study.Cancers · 2022Article
- Alcohol consumption and associated factors among middle-aged and older adults: results from China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study.BMC public health · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Epidemiological studies of middle-aged populations generally find the relationship between alcohol intake and the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke to be either U- or J-shaped. This review describes the extent that these relationships are likely to be causal, and the extent that they may be due to specific methodological weaknesses in epidemiological studies. The consistency in the vascular benefit associated with moderate drinking (compared with non-drinking) observed across different studies, together with the existence of credible biological pathways, strongly suggests that at least some of this benefit is real. However, because of biases introduced by: choice of reference categories; reverse causality bias; variations in alcohol intake over time; and confounding, some of it is likely to be an artefact. For heavy drinking, different study biases have the potential to act in opposing directions, and as such, the true effects of heavy drinking on vascular risk are uncertain. However, because of the known harmful effects of heavy drinking on non-vascular mortality, the problem is an academic one. Studies of the effects of alcohol consumption on health outcomes should recognise the methodological biases they are likely to face, and design, analyse and interpret their studies accordingly. While regular moderate alcohol consumption during middle-age probably does reduce vascular risk, care should be taken when making general recommendations about safe levels of alcohol intake. In particular, it is likely that any promotion of alcohol for health reasons would do substantially more harm than good.
Indexed as
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.