ArticlePloS one2021
Alcohol use and cardiometabolic risk in the UK Biobank: A Mendelian randomization study.
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- A review of the relationship between dimensions of alcohol consumption and the burden of disease: 2026 update including Mendelian randomisation studies.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2026Pooled it
- A burden of proof study on alcohol consumption and ischemic heart disease.Nature communications · 2024Pooled it
- Alcohol consumption and its association with cancer, cardiovascular, liver and brain diseases: a systematic review of Mendelian randomization studies.Frontiers in epidemiology · 2024Pooled it
- Decreased degree of adipocyte differentiation in visceral adipose tissue contributes to metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Occupational and lifestyle factors associated with SCORE-2 cardiovascular risk among emergency healthcare workers.Irish journal of medical science · 2026Article
- Health effects associated with alcohol consumption: a Burden of Proof study.Nature health · 2026Article
- Met-ALD and ALD- Does Differentiating These Impact Management and Clinical Outcomes?Current hepatology reports · 2025Article
- Position Statement on Cardiometabolic Health Across the Woman's Life Course - 2025.Arquivos brasileiros de cardiologia · 2025Article
- Article
- Sexual Dimorphism in Cardiometabolic Diseases: From Development to Senescence and Therapeutic Approaches.Cells · 2025Review
- Investigating whether smoking and alcohol behaviours influence risk of type 2 diabetes using a Mendelian randomisation study.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Position Statement on Cardiometabolic Health Across the Woman's Life Course - 2025.Revista brasileira de ginecologia e obstetricia : revista da Federacao Brasileira das Sociedades de Ginecologia e Obstetricia · 2025Article
- Analyzing the correlation between acute ischemic stroke and triglyceride-glucose index based on ordered logistic regression.Frontiers in neurology · 2025Article
- A Mendelian randomization study of alcohol use and cardiometabolic disease risk in a multi-ancestry population from the Million Veteran Program.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2024Article
- Addressing the credibility crisis in Mendelian randomization.BMC medicine · 2024Review
- A phenome-wide association and Mendelian randomisation study of alcohol use variants in a diverse cohort comprising over 3 million individuals.EBioMedicine · 2024Article
- Interaction of genetic risk and lifestyle on the incidence of atrial fibrillation.Heart (British Cardiac Society) · 2024Article
- Unravelling the complex causal effects of substance use behaviours on common diseases.Communications medicine · 2024Article
- Alcohol consumption and the risk of all-cause and cause-specific mortality-a linear and nonlinear Mendelian randomization study.International journal of epidemiology · 2024Article
- The dose-response relationship of pre-menopausal alcohol consumption with age at menopause: a population study of 280 497 women in Norway.International journal of epidemiology · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Observational studies suggest alcohol use promotes the development of some adverse cardiometabolic traits but protects against others including outcomes related to coronary artery disease. We used Mendelian randomization (MR) to explore causal relationships between the degree of alcohol consumption and several cardiometabolic traits in the UK Biobank. Using the well-established ADH1B Arg47His variant (rs1229984) and up to 24 additional SNPs recently found to be associated with alcohol consumption in an independent dataset as instruments, we conducted two-stage least squares and inverse weighted variance MR analyses, both as one-sample analyses in the UK Biobank and as two-sample analyses in external consortia. In the UK Biobank inverse variance weighted analyses, we found that one additional drink of alcohol per day was positively associated with systolic blood pressure (beta = 2.65 mmHg [1.40, 3.89]), hemorrhagic stroke (OR = 2.25 [1.41, 3.60]), and atrial fibrillation (OR = 1.26 [1.07, 1.48]), which were replicated in multivariable analyses. Alcohol was also associated with all cardiovascular disease and all-cause death. A positive association with myocardial infarction did not replicate in multivariable analysis, with suggestive mediation through blood pressure; similarly, a positive association between alcohol use with type 2 diabetes was mitigated by BMI in multivariable analysis. Findings were generally null in replication with two-sample analyses. Alcohol was not protective for any disease outcome with any analysis method, dataset, or strata. Stratifications by sex and smoking in the UK Biobank revealed higher point estimates of risk for several outcomes for men and mixed results for smoking strata, but no statistically significant heterogeneity. Our results are consistent with an overall harmful and/or null effect of alcohol on cardiometabolic health at all levels of use and suggest that even moderate alcohol use should not be promoted as a part of a healthy diet and lifestyle.
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