Abstract
PurposeEpidemiologic studies assessing the relationship between alcohol consumption and the risk of age-related cataracts (ARCs) led to inconsistent results. This meta-analysis was performed to fill this gap.MethodsEligible studies were identified via computer searches and reviewing the reference lists of these obtained articles. Pooled estimates of the relative risks (RR) and the corresponding 95% confidence Intervals (CI) were calculated using random effects models.ResultsSeven prospective cohort studies involving a total of 119,706 participants were ultimately included in this meta-analysis. Pooled results showed that there is no substantial overall increased risk of ARC due to heavy alcohol consumption. The estimated RRs comparing heavy drinkers versus non-drinkers were 1.25 (95% CI: 1.00, 1.56) for cataract sugery, 1.06 (95% CI: 0.63, 1.81) for cortical cataracts, 1.26 (95% CI: 0.93, 1.73) for nuclear cataracts, and 0.91 (95% CI: 0.32, 2.61) for posterior subcapsular cataracts (PSCs), respectively. No significant associations between moderate alcohol consumption and cataracts were observed. The pooled RRs comparing moderate drinkers versus non-drinkers were 0.90 (95% CI: 0.64, 1.26) for cataract surgery, 0.97 (95% CI: 0.75, 1.25) for cortical cataracts, 0.91 (95% CI: 0.76, 1.08) for nuclear cataracts, and 0.97 (95% CI: 0.49, 1.91) for PSCs, respectively.ConclusionsThis meta-analysis suggests that there is no substantial overall increased risk of ARC due to alcohol intake. Because of the limited number of studies, the findings from our study must be confirmed in future research via well-designed cohort or intervention studies.
Highlights
Age-Related Cataracts (ARCs) remain the leading cause of blindness in developed and developing countries [1,2,3]
Epidemiologic studies that have assessed this relationship, have not consistently shown that heavy alcohol consumption is associated with a higher risk of ARCs or that moderate alcohol consumption is protective [11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38]
As for heavy drinking versus no drinking, there was a borderline positive association between the risk of cataract surgery and the consumption of $20 g/day of alcohol (RR = 1.25, 95% confidence Intervals (CI): 1.00, 1.56), with moderate heterogeneity (P = 0.121; I2 = 52.60%)
Summary
Age-Related Cataracts (ARCs) remain the leading cause of blindness in developed and developing countries [1,2,3]. An extensive body of data shows concordant J-shaped associations between alcohol intake and a variety of adverse health outcomes [10] This may be true regarding ARCs. Epidemiologic studies that have assessed this relationship, have not consistently shown that heavy alcohol consumption is associated with a higher risk of ARCs or that moderate alcohol consumption is protective [11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38]. Prospective cohort studies were included in this study because of the limitations of retrospective studies in terms of assessing the associations of alcohol consumption due to the significance of recall bias in such studies
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