Reply to Why do you drink alcohol?

Forum Index » Health and Medicine

Reply to "Why do you drink alcohol?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Many thanks to PP who cited the meta-analysis linked above. It is refreshing to be able to discuss based on refereed results.

From the (corrected version of the) refereed study cited above, and yes, I am cherry picking a single sentence:

"In the fully adjusted model, there was a nonsignificantly increased risk of all-cause mortality among drinkers who drank 25 to 44 g per day (RR, 1.05; P = .28)..."

One could rephrase that direct quote - without changing the meaning - as:

"In the fully adjusted model, there was no significant increased risk of all-cause mortality among drinkers who drank 25 to 44 gper day (..."

In turn, that could be phrased - without changing the meaning - as:

"Drinkers who drank 25g to 44g per day did not have significant increase in all-cause mortality." (Compared with lifetime non-drinkers.)

PP who cited the paper said that no net benefit exists from moderate drinking. The cited refereed paper indeed supports that statement from PP.

The cherry-picked sentence from that paper supports the claim that very moderate drinking does not significantly increase all-cause mortality. This means that being a very moderate drinker and a lifetime non-drinker statistically have the same risks (i.e., no significant difference in all-cause mortality risks).

Now, the cited paper also said that white males were over-represented in the original studies included in the meta-analysis. This is entirely plausible, simply because fewer medical studies are done outside US, Canada, and Europe than are done in those areas. Further, at least in the US it often is more difficult to recruit medical study participants from ethnic minorities. Studies with large populations are both more difficult and more expensive to execute, especially when trying to get a large enough sample of participants from ethnic minorities. So the original studies might (i.e., unclear; needs more research; not sure) have more validity for white males. In this case, I believe white is being used as a synonym for European ancestry.

So very moderate drinking seems fine, according to the cited study. 
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics