Increased alcohol consumption as a cause of alcoholism, without similar evidence for depression: a Mendelian randomization study.
Int J Epidemiol
; 44(2): 526-39, 2015 Apr.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-25433705
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Increased alcohol consumption has been associated with depression and alcoholism, but whether these associations are causal remains unclear. We tested whether alcohol consumption is causally associated with depression and alcoholism.METHODS:
We included 78,154 men and women aged 20-100 years randomly selected in 1991-2010 from the general population of Copenhagen, Denmark, and genotyped 68,486 participants for two genetic variants in two alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) genes, ADH-1B (rs1229984) and ADH-1C (rs698). We performed observational and causal analyses using a Mendelian randomization design with antidepressant medication use and hospitalization/death, with depression and alcoholism as outcomes.RESULTS:
In prospective analyses, the multifactorially adjusted hazard ratio for participants reporting >6 drinks/day vs participants reporting 0.1-1 drinks/day was 1.28 (95% confidence interval, 1.00-1.65) for prescription antidepressant use, with a corresponding hazard ratio of 0.80 (0.45-1.45) for hospitalization/death with depression and of 11.7 (8.77-15.6) for hospitalization/death with alcoholism. For hospitalization/death with alcoholism, instrumental variable analysis yielded a causal odds ratio of 28.6 (95 % confidence interval 6.47-126) for an increase of 1 drink/day estimated from the combined genotype combination, whereas the corresponding multifactorially adjusted observational odds ratio was 1.28 (1.25-1.31). Corresponding odds ratios were 1.11 (0.67-1.83) causal and 1.04 (1.03-1.06) observational for prescription antidepressant use, and 4.52 (0.99-20.5) causal and 0.98 (0.94-1.03) observational for hospitalization/death with depression.CONCLUSIONS:
These data indicate that the association between increased alcohol consumption and alcoholism is causal, without similar strong evidence for depression.Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Alcohol Drinking
/
Depressive Disorder
/
Alcoholism
Type of study:
Clinical_trials
/
Observational_studies
/
Prevalence_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Limits:
Adult
/
Aged
/
Aged80
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
/
Middle aged
Country/Region as subject:
Europa
Language:
En
Journal:
Int J Epidemiol
Year:
2015
Document type:
Article