Abstract
The paper discussed here claimed that the old guidelines for safe alcohol consumption should be replaced by much lower ones of about one standard drink per day. However the paper suffers from some statistical problems which lead to misleading results. In addition, by concentrating on mortality and older members of the population it fails to account for important aspects of the effect of alcohol use on individual health. It is shown when the effects of alcohol use on self-reported health and health service utilization are considered what has been traditionally been proposed as safe drinking behavior should continue to be used.
Highlights
In a recent paper in the Lancet Wood et al (2018) announced the following result ‘In current drinkers of alcohol in high-income countries, the threshold for lowest risk of all-cause mortality was about 100 g/week
The second table tells a similar story except that drinking every day minimizes doctor visits. These results are from the latent class ordered probability models which include education, smoking status, body mass index and marital
This has the value -0.284 and is the smallest of the alcohol coefficients, indicating that drinking every day minimizes the number of doctor visits for males in this age group
Summary
In a recent paper in the Lancet Wood et al (2018) announced the following result ‘In current drinkers of alcohol in high-income countries, the threshold for lowest risk of all-cause mortality was about 100 g/week. For cardiovascular disease subtypes other than myocardial infarction, there were no clear risk thresholds below which lower alcohol consumption stopped being associated with lower disease risk. These data support limits for alcohol consumption that are lower than those recommended in most current guidelines’ (page 513). This study is a meta-study of 83 prospective studies involving data from 19 high income European countries and it has 111 authors It would be surprising if a study of this magnitude with its involvement with so many established scholars produced results which were contentious or possibly inaccurate. The study suffers from a number of statistical faults and what is more important its main focus neglects important issues in the role that alcohol use plays in individual and public health
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