Observational studyMolecular psychiatry2022
Alcohol consumption and telomere length: Mendelian randomization clarifies alcohol's effects.
Observational study in Molecular psychiatry, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 49 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
49 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 92 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Association between Telomere Length and Head and Neck Cancer Risk: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Pooled it
- Prospective and cross-sectional associations of neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage with drinking and heavy drinking in mid-adulthood in a US national cohort.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2026Article
- Telomere Length in Celiac Disease in a Population-Based Cohort: A HUNT Study.Clinical and translational gastroenterology · 2026Article
- Elimination of senescent cells with senolytic drugs as adjunctive host-directed therapy reduces tuberculosis progression in mice.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Features of Alcohol Harm Reduction Campaigns That Resonate With Older Adults: Insights From an Australian Qualitative Study Using Prompt Videos.Drug and alcohol review · 2026Article
- Longer leukocyte telomere length increases the odds of premature rupture of membranes: a cross-sectional study based on UK Biobank.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Genomic, phenomic and geographic associations of leukocyte telomere length in the United States.Nature genetics · 2026Article
- Alcohol Consumption and DNA Methylation in a Mediterranean Cohort: A Focus on Oxidative Stress and Aging Biomarkers.Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Molecular markers, mechanisms and metrics of biological aging: a scoping review.Frontiers in aging · 2026Review
- Beyond ethanol: wine, biological aging, and the Mediterranean context.International journal of public health · 2026Article
- Moderate Wine Consumption, Defined by the Mediterranean Diet, Is Associated With Delayed Biological Aging in Men From the Moli-sani Study.International journal of public health · 2026Article
- Biological aging and lifespan in men and women using a Mendelian randomization study.Human genomics · 2025Article
- Article
- Impact of smoking and alcohol consumption on telomere length: A univariable and multivariable Mendelian randomization study.Medicine · 2025Article
- Morphological Changes of the Retina in Alcohol Use Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Studies Using Optical Coherence Tomography.Indian journal of psychological medicine · 2025Review
- Alcohol consumption in P301S mice accelerates gait impairments, modifies aggregation of pathological tau and alters microglia within the hippocampus.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2025Article
- Maternal Lifestyle During Pregnancy and Its Influence on Offspring's Telomere Length.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Chronic alcohol consumption accelerates cardiovascular aging and decreases cardiovascular reserve capacity.GeroScience · 2025Article
- Prolonged exposure to leisure screen time notably accelerates biological aging: Evidence from observational studies and genetic associations.Neurotherapeutics : the journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics · 2025Observational
- The emergence of chronic diseases of adulthood and middle age in the young: the COIDS (chronic inflammation, obesity, insulin resistance/type 2 diabetes, and depressive syndromes) noxious quartet of pro-inflammatory stress outcomes.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Alcohol's impact on telomere length, a proposed marker of biological aging, is unclear. We performed the largest observational study to date (in n = 245,354 UK Biobank participants) and compared findings with Mendelian randomization (MR) estimates. Two-sample MR used data from 472,174 participants in a recent genome-wide association study (GWAS) of telomere length. Genetic variants were selected on the basis of associations with alcohol consumption (n = 941,280) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) (n = 57,564 cases). Non-linear MR employed UK Biobank individual data. MR analyses suggested a causal relationship between alcohol traits, more strongly for AUD, and telomere length. Higher genetically-predicted AUD (inverse variance-weighted (IVW) β = -0.06, 95% confidence interval (CI): -0.10 to -0.02, p = 0.001) was associated with shorter telomere length. There was a weaker association with genetically-predicted alcoholic drinks weekly (IVW β = -0.07, CI: -0.14 to -0.01, p = 0.03). Results were consistent across methods and independent from smoking. Non-linear analyses indicated a potential threshold relationship between alcohol and telomere length. Our findings indicate that alcohol consumption may shorten telomere length. There are implications for age-related diseases.
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.