ArticleBMC medicine2015
Holidays, celebrations, and commiserations: measuring drinking during feasting and fasting to improve national and individual estimates of alcohol consumption.
Article in BMC medicine, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
20 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 49 citations in OpenAlex.
- Changes in alcohol use during the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe: A meta-analysis of observational studies.Drug and alcohol review · 2022Pooled it
- Association between clinically recorded alcohol consumption and initial presentation of 12 cardiovascular diseases: population based cohort study using linked health records.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2017Trial
- Segmenting Increasing- and High-Risk Alcohol Drinkers by Motives and Occasions: Implications for Targeted Interventions.Nutrients · 2025Article
- Impact of Winter Holidays on Body Composition Measured via Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis: A Prospective Study.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- 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
- Association Between Alcohol Expectancy and Drinking Behaviors in Summer Vacation and Last Year Among College Students.International journal of general medicine · 2023Article
- Normal and unusual days for dietary intake during the 12 months after a breast cancer diagnosis in women.European journal of nutrition · 2022Article
- Domestication of drinking: a survey study of changes in types of drinking occasions during periods of increasing and decreasing alcohol consumption in the 2000s in Finland.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2022Article
- Seasonal Variations of Hospital Admissions for Alcohol-Related Hepatitis in the United States.Gastroenterology research · 2022Article
- Sleep and Alcohol Use Patterns During Federal Holidays and Daylight Saving Time Transitions in the United States.Frontiers in physiology · 2022Article
- A national trauma database analysis of alcohol- associated injuries.Singapore medical journal · 2019Article
- The Association between Mental Wellbeing, Levels of Harmful Drinking, and Drinking Motivations: A Cross-Sectional Study of the UK Adult Population.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2018Article
- High-Intensity Drinking.Alcohol research : current reviews · 2018Review
- Typology and Dynamics of Heavier Drinking Styles in Great Britain: 1978-2010.Alcohol and alcoholism (Oxford, Oxfordshire) · 2017Article
- Ten-year alcohol consumption typologies and trajectories of C-reactive protein, interleukin-6 and interleukin-1 receptor antagonist over the following 12 years: a prospective cohort study.Journal of internal medicine · 2017Article
- Underestimating the Alcohol Content of a Glass of Wine: The Implications for Estimates of Mortality Risk.Alcohol and alcoholism (Oxford, Oxfordshire) · 2016Article
- Twenty-year trajectories of alcohol consumption during midlife and atherosclerotic thickening in early old age: findings from two British population cohort studies.BMC medicine · 2016Article
- Unravelling the alcohol harm paradox: a population-based study of social gradients across very heavy drinking thresholds.BMC public health · 2016Article
- Adverse Childhood Experiences and Alcohol Consumption in Midlife and Early Old-Age.Alcohol and alcoholism (Oxford, Oxfordshire) · 2016Article
- The alcohol harm paradox: using a national survey to explore how alcohol may disproportionately impact health in deprived individuals.BMC public health · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundAccurate measures of alcohol consumption are critical in assessing health harms caused by alcohol. In many countries, there are large discrepancies between survey-based measures of consumption and those based on alcohol sales. In England, surveys measuring typical alcohol consumption account for only around 60% of alcohol sold. Here, using a national survey, we measure both typical drinking and atypical/special occasion drinking (i.e., feasting and fasting) in order to develop more complete measures of alcohol consumption.
methodsA national random probability telephone survey was implemented (May 2013 to April 2014). Inclusion criteria were resident in England and aged 16 years or over. Respondents (n = 6,085) provided information on typical drinking (amounts per day, drinking frequency) and changes in consumption associated with routine atypical days (e.g., Friday nights) and special dinking periods (e.g., holidays) and events (e.g., weddings). Generalized linear modelling was used to identify additional alcohol consumption associated with atypical/special occasion drinking by age, sex, and typical drinking level.
resultsAccounting for atypical/special occasion drinking added more than 120 million UK units of alcohol/week (~12 million bottles of wine) to population alcohol consumption in England. The greatest impact was seen among 25- to 34-year-olds with the highest typical consumption, where atypical/special occasions added approximately 18 units/week (144 g) for both sexes. Those reporting the lowest typical consumption (≤1 unit/week) showed large relative increases in consumption (209.3%) with most drinking associated with special occasions. In some demographics, adjusting for special occasions resulted in overall reductions in annual consumption (e.g., females, 65 to 74 years in the highest typical drinking category).
conclusionsTypical drinking alone can be a poor proxy for actual alcohol consumption. Accounting for atypical/special occasion drinking fills 41.6% of the gap between surveyed consumption and national sales in England. These additional units are inevitably linked to increases in lifetime risk of alcohol-related disease and injury, particularly as special occasions often constitute heavy drinking episodes. Better population measures of celebratory, festival, and holiday drinking are required in national surveys in order to adequately measure both alcohol consumption and the health harms associated with special occasion drinking.
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.