ArticlePloS one2013
The association between alcohol exposure and self-reported health status: the effect of separating former and current drinkers.
Article in PloS one, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers, 4 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
26 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Long-term effects of alcohol consumption on cognitive function: a systematic review and dose-response analysis of evidence published between 2007 and 2018.Systematic reviews · 2020Pooled it
- Alcohol Consumption and Mortality From Coronary Heart Disease: An Updated Meta-Analysis of Cohort Studies.Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs · 2017Pooled it
- Is alcohol consumption a risk factor for prostate cancer? A systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC cancer · 2016Pooled it
- Do "Moderate" Drinkers Have Reduced Mortality Risk? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Alcohol Consumption and All-Cause Mortality.Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs · 2016Pooled it
- Association between alcohol consumption and mortality in Parkinson's disease.Journal of neural transmission (Vienna, Austria : 1996) · 2026Article
- The limitations of biomarkers in addressing bias in alcohol and cardiovascular disease research.European heart journal · 2025Article
- Determining the Importance of Lifestyle Risk Factors in Predicting Binge Eating Disorder After Bariatric Surgery Using Machine Learning Models and Lifestyle Scores.Obesity surgery · 2025Article
- Article
- Drinking alcohol in moderation is associated with lower rate of all-cause mortality in individuals with higher rather than lower educational level: findings from the MORGAM project.European journal of epidemiology · 2023Article
- Mediterranean Alcohol-Drinking Pattern and Arterial Hypertension in the "Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra" (SUN) Prospective Cohort Study.Nutrients · 2023Article
- Alcohol and falls among people with HIV infection: A view from Russia and the United States.Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research · 2022Article
- The impact of removing former drinkers from genome-wide association studies of AUDIT-C.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2021Article
- Patterns of Alcohol Consumption in the PURE Poland Cohort Study and Their Relationship with Health Problems.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Low-level alcohol consumption and cancer mortality.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Patterns of Substance Use and Associations with Mental, Physical, and Social Functioning: A Latent Class Analysis of a National Sample of U.S. Adults Ages 30-80.Substance use & misuse · 2021Article
- The Association between Alcohol Drinking Patterns and Health-Related Quality of Life in the Korean Adult Population: Effects of Misclassification Error on Estimation of Association.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Article
- Alcohol Consumption and Risk of Hospitalizations and Mortality in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study.Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research · 2020Article
- Changes in Alcohol Use and Associations With Disease Activity, Health Status, and Mortality in Rheumatoid Arthritis.Arthritis care & research · 2020Article
- The association of lifetime alcohol use with mortality and cancer risk in older adults: A cohort study.PLoS medicine · 2018Article
- Prevalence and Factors Associated with Hazardous Alcohol Use Among Persons Living with HIV Across the US in the Current Era of Antiretroviral Treatment.AIDS and behavior · 2017Article
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.
Funding
Abstract
aimsTo investigate the direction and degree of potential bias introducedto analyses of drinking and health status which exclude former drinkers from exposure groups.
designPooled analysis of 14 waves (1997-2010) of the U.S. National Health Interview Survey (NHIS).
settingGeneral population-based study.
participants404,462 participants, from 14 waves of the NHIS, who had knownself-reported health status and alcohol consumption status. MEASUREMENTS: Self-reported health status was used as the indicatorof health. Two approaches were used to classify alcohol consumption: (i) separation of former drinkers and current drinkers, and (ii) combined former and current drinkers. The prevalence of fair/poor health by alcohol use, gender and age with 95% confidence intervals was estimated. The difference in prevalence of fair/poor health status for lifetime abstainers, former drinkers, current drinkers and drinkers (former drinkers and current drinkers combined) were compared using Poisson regression with robust estimations of variance.
findingsExcluding former drinkers from drinker groups exaggerates the difference in health status between abstainers and drinkers, especially for males.
conclusionsIn cohort study analyses, former drinkers should be assigned to a drinking category based on their previous alcohol consumption patterns and not treated as a discrete exposure group.
Indexed as
Identifiers
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.