just-drinks authors and correspondents

Columns by International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research

Critiques from the International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research

The International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research hosts forums that look at research conducted around the world on the relationship between alcohol consumption and health.

Articles by International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research

Should worldwide alcohol consumption guidelines be reduced to one drink per day? - International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research Critique 240 8 July 2020

A recent study to have been reviewed by the International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research used very questionable data to suggest that drinking guidelines for all countries should be lowered to no more than one drink per day.

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Does the funding of research by alcohol companies lead to sponsorship bias? - International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research Critique 239 28 May 2020

A recent study set out to evaluate sponsorship bias in observational alcohol research by focusing on a spectrum of health outcomes related to moderate alcohol consumption.

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Alcohol and cardiovascular heart disease - The impossibility of standardising confounders - International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research Critique 238 8 April 2020

In a recent meta-analysis into alcohol consumption and the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), the authors compared earlier studies for the number of potential confounding variables included in each paper.

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Will your alcohol consumption help or hinder you from reaching 90? - International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research Critique 237 3 March 2020

An interesting and well-done study from a cohort of ageing men in the Netherlands that evaluated how alcohol consumption data collected at 68-to-70 years old related to the risk that the individual would survive to age 90.

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Why studies into the link between alcohol and breast cancer have produced different results - International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research Critique 236 21 February 2020

The relationship between alcohol consumption and the risk of breast cancer has been the subject of innumerable epidemiologic studies over many decades, with most showing a slight increase in risk even for light drinking. However, it has been shown that this relationship is attenuated when certain potential confounders are adjusted for, including folate levels, frequency of binge drinking and the use of post-menopausal hormonal therapy.

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What effect does alcohol have on consumers with a lower socio-economic status? - International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research Critique 235 16 January 2020

In recently-released research, the authors aimed to investigate whether - and to what extent - consumption by beverage type, BMI, smoking and other factors explain inequalities in alcohol-related harm evidenced through wholly-attributable alcohol-related hospital admissions (ARHA).

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How good for you is red wine? - International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research Critique 234 18 November 2019

The latest research to go under The ISFAR's microscope supports earlier research relating wine consumption to gut microbiota and its relationship with obesity as well as with cardiovascular and other diseases.

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Can alcohol consumption slow the onset of dementia? - International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research Critique 233 11 November 2019

The latest study to go under The ISFAR's microscope was designed to assess the association between alcohol consumption and dementia and the roles of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and apolipoproteinEe4 (APOEE4) genotype in modifying this association.

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Does moderate alcohol consumption in later life reduce the risk of mortality? - International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research Critique 232 4 September 2019

There are well-known problems inherent in most observational studies of alcohol and health. As well as having to rely on self-reporting of intake, these include single-time point consumption assessments, inadequate confounder adjustments, accounting for reverse causation, selection bias, short follow-up, residual confounding and lacking information on chronic health conditions that may mediate the association between alcohol consumption and mortality.

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What effect does alcohol consumption have on obesity? - International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research Critique 231 21 August 2019

While alcoholic beverages contain calories that are absorbed, the association between alcohol intake and body weight and obesity is unclear. Limited clinical trials have not confirmed a positive association between alcohol intake and weight, while some epidemiologic studies, including prospective cohort studies, show that regular moderate drinkers are less likely to be obese than abstainers.