Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, University of Ioannina Medical School, Ioannina, Greece
Hideaki Suzuki
Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Tohoku University Hospital, Sendai, Japan; Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan; Department of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
Wenjia Bai
Department of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Data Science Institute, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
MRC Centre for Environment and Health, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; Division of Biomedical Sciences, Department of Life Sciences, College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Brunel University London, London, United Kingdom
He Gao
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; MRC Centre for Environment and Health, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
Department of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; UK Dementia Research Institute at Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; National Institute for Health Research Imperial College Biomedical Research Centre, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; MRC Centre for Environment and Health, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; UK Dementia Research Institute at Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; National Institute for Health Research Imperial College Biomedical Research Centre, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom; British Heart Foundation Centre for Research Excellence, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
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. Funding: See acknowledgements.
