Bias in genetic studies may explain beneficial effects of alcohol on health

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-01-13 03:00

Australia; QLD

Genetic studies that rely on self-reported drinking may be biased by misreporting and changes in behaviour, according to Australian research, which may explain conflicting reports about links between alcohol and health. Drinking too much has long been linked to an increased risk of diseases, however, some genetic studies have found that those with genetic-based tendencies towards drinking also have lower rates of some diseases, suggesting a possible protective effect of alcohol against disease. The researchers say these conflicting results could be because patients with a disease may change their alcohol consumption upon diagnosis or misreport their alcohol consumption in a survey. When the accounted for these biases any potential protective effect from alcohol disappeared.

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From: Springer Nature

Genetics: Correcting for genetic associations between alcohol and disease

Genetic studies on self-reported traits such as alcohol consumption may be biased by misreporting and changes in behaviour, reports a study in Nature Communications this week. These findings could help to explain conflicting reports about the correlation between alcohol consumption and certain diseases.

Increased alcohol consumption has long been believed to increase the risk of many different diseases. However, recent studies have found that the genetic basis for alcohol consumption is negatively correlated with certain diseases, suggesting a possible protective effect of alcohol against disease. One possible explanation for this is that patients with a disease may change their alcohol consumption upon diagnosis or misreport their alcohol consumption in a survey.

Jian Yang and colleagues used data from 455,607 individuals in the UK Biobank to investigate whether misreporting and changes in behaviour can bias the results of genetic studies on alcohol consumption. Without correcting for misreporting or changes in behaviour, they found negative genetic correlations between alcohol consumption and type-2 diabetes, hypertensive disease and iron deficient anaemias. After correcting for misreporting and behavioural changes, the negative correlations disappeared and they found positive correlations with eight different conditions, including cardiovascular disease and total disease count.

The results of this study serve to caution researchers about potential biases in genetic studies of behavioural traits and provide a method to correct for them. However, the authors note that this bias does not necessarily apply to all populations or behavioural traits.

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Journal/
conference: Nature Communications

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: The University of Queensland, Institute for Molecular Bioscience, Westlake University, China

Funder: This research was supported by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (1113400). We thank Kyoko Watanabe for the assistance in the PheWAS analysis. This study makes use of data from the UK Biobank (project ID: 12505). UK Biobank was established by the Wellcome Trust medical charity, Medical Research Council, Department of Health, Scottish Government and the Northwest Regional Development Agency. It has also had funding from the Welsh Assembly Government, British Heart Foundation and Diabetes UK.

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