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Association between alcohol consumption and multiple sclerosis: a meta-analysis of observational studies

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Abstract

To investigate the association between alcohol consumption and multiple sclerosis risk, we performed a systematic literature search of PubMed, EmBase and Web of Science databases for all relevant articles regarding alcohol and multiple sclerosis. Our meta-analysis consisted of 10 studies, including nine case–controls and one cohort study. The odds ratios (OR) of the association between alcohol consumption and multiple sclerosis were 0.92 [95 % confidence interval (CI) 0.73–1.17] overall, 0.91 (95 % CI 0.39–2.41) for prospective study, and 0.92 (95 % CI 0.72–1.19) for retrospective studies. In addition, neither subgroup analyses nor sensitivity analyses showed a substantially change in the pooled OR and 95 % CI. Meta-analysis showed that there is no evidence that alcohol consumption is associated with an increased risk of multiple sclerosis. There may be a potential protective effect of alcohol consumption on MS incidence, however, this trend may not be obvious and should be validated by further research.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by three grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2008ZX10002-007,2008ZX10002-018, and 2008ZX10002-025), the leading talents of science in Shanghai 2010(022), the key discipline construction of evidence-based public health in Shanghai (12GWZX0602).

Conflict of interest

The authors declared that they have no conflict of interest.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Department of Health Statistics, Second Military Medical University, No. 800 Xiangyin Road, Shanghai, 200433, China

      Tiantian Zhu, Xiaofei Ye, Tianyi Zhang, Zhiyong Lin, Wentao Shi & Jia He

    2. Graduate School, Second Military Medical University, No.800 Xiangyin Road, Shanghai, 200433, China

      Zhiyong Lin

    3. School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200025, China

      Xin Wei & Yuzhou Liu

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    1. Tiantian Zhu
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    Correspondence to Jia He.

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    T. Zhu, X. Ye, T. Zhang, Z. Lin contributed equally and are co-first authors of this article.

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    Zhu, T., Ye, X., Zhang, T. et al. Association between alcohol consumption and multiple sclerosis: a meta-analysis of observational studies. Neurol Sci 36, 1543–1550 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-015-2326-7

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