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Why Do Only Some Cohort Studies Find Health Benefits From Low-Volume Alcohol Use? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Study Characteristics That May Bias Mortality Risk Estimates (www.jsad.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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From the article:

As predicted, studies with younger cohorts and separating former and occasional drinkers from abstainers estimated similar mortality risk for low-volume drinkers (RR = 0.98, 95% CI [0.87, 1.11]) as abstainers. Studies not meeting these quality criteria estimated significantly lower risk for low-volume drinkers (RR = 0.84, [0.79, 0.89]). In exploratory analyses, studies controlling for smoking and/or socioeconomic status had significantly reduced mortality risks for low-volume drinkers. However, mean RR estimates for low-volume drinkers in nonsmoking cohorts were above 1.0 (RR = 1.16, [0.91, 1.41]).

Studies with life-time selection biases may create misleading positive health associations. These biases pervade the field of alcohol epidemiology and can confuse communications about health risks. Future research should investigate whether smoking status mediates, moderates, or confounds alcohol-mortality risk relationships.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago

What they see as "bad research" is looking at an older cohort without taking into consideration their earlier drinking habits - that is, were they previously alcoholics or did they generally have other problems with their health?

If you don't correct for these things, you might find that people who are not drinking seems less healthy than people who are. BUT, that's not because they're not drinking, it's just because of their preexisting conditions. Their peers who are drinking a little bit tend to not have these preexisting conditions (on average)