Mendelian randomization · 2024

Relationship between alcohol consumption and dementia with Mendelian randomization approaches among older adults in the United States.

KA Campbell, M Fu, E MacDonald, M Zawistowski, KM Bakulski, EB Ware. medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences.

BACKGROUND: In observational studies, the association between alcohol consumption and dementia is mixed. METHODS: We performed two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) using summary statistics from genome-wide association studies of weekly alcohol consumption and late-onset Alzheimer's disease and one-sample MR in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), wave 2012. Inverse variance weighted two-stage regression provided odds ratios of association between alcohol exposure and dementia or cognitively impaired, non-dementia relative to cognitively normal. RESULTS: Alcohol consumption was not associated with late-onset Alzheimer's disease using two-sample MR (OR=1.15, 95% confidence interval (CI):[0.78, 1.72]). In HRS, doubling weekly alcohol consumption was not associated with dementia (African ancestries, n=1,322, OR=1.00, 95% CI [0.45, 2.25]; European ancestries, n=7,160, OR=1.37, 95% CI [0.53, 3.51]) or cognitively impaired, non-dementia (African ancestries, n=1,322, OR=1.17, 95% CI [0.69, 1.98]; European ancestries, n=7,160, OR=0.75, 95% CI [0.47, 1.22]). CONCLUSION: Alcohol consumption was not associated with cognitively impaired, non-dementia or dementia status.

Open sourcedoi:10.1101/2023.12.22.23300298PMID 38196582