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Alcohol consumption in the general population is associated with structural changes in multiple organ systems.

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Title: Alcohol consumption in the general population is associated with structural changes in multiple organ systems.
Authors: Evangelou, E
Suzuki, H
Bai, W
Pazoki, R
Gao, H
Matthews, P
Elliott, P
Item Type: Journal Article
Abstract: Background: Excessive alcohol consumption is associated with damage to various organs, but its multi-organ effects have not been characterised across the usual range of alcohol drinking in a large general population sample. Methods: We assessed global effect sizes of alcohol consumption on quantitative magnetic resonance imaging phenotypic measures of the brain, heart, aorta, and liver of UK Biobank participants who reported drinking alcohol. Results: We found a monotonic association of higher alcohol consumption with lower normalised brain volume across the range of alcohol intakes (–1.7 × 10−3 ± 0.76 × 10−3 per doubling of alcohol consumption, p=3.0 × 10−14). Alcohol consumption was also associated directly with measures of left ventricular mass index and left ventricular and atrial volume indices. Liver fat increased by a mean of 0.15% per doubling of alcohol consumption. Conclusions: Our results imply that there is not a ‘safe threshold’ below which there are no toxic effects of alcohol. Current public health guidelines concerning alcohol consumption may need to be revisited.
Issue Date: 1-Jun-2021
Date of Acceptance: 4-May-2021
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/89622
DOI: 10.7554/eLife.65325
ISSN: 2050-084X
Publisher: eLife Sciences Publications Ltd
Start Page: 1
End Page: 15
Journal / Book Title: eLife
Volume: 10
Copyright Statement: © 2021 The Author(s). Evangelou et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Sponsor/Funder: Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust- BRC Funding
Medical Research Council (MRC)
Medical Research Council (MRC)
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC)
UK DRI Ltd
UK DRI Ltd
UK DRI Ltd
Medical Research Council (MRC)
Funder's Grant Number: RDF03
MR/L01341X/1
MR/T502613/1
EP/N014529/1
N/A
4050641385
N/A
4050641385
Keywords: alcohol consumption
aorta
brain
epidemiology
global health
heart
imaging
liver
none
0601 Biochemistry and Cell Biology
Publication Status: Published
Online Publication Date: 2021-06-01
Appears in Collections:Faculty of Medicine
School of Public Health
Department of Brain Sciences



This item is licensed under a Creative Commons License Creative Commons