Educational attainment and drinking behaviors: Mendelian randomization study in UK Biobank

Abstract

Educational attainment has been associated with drinking behaviors in observation studies. We performed Mendelian randomization analysis to determine whether educational attainment causally affected drinking behaviors, including amount of alcohol intakes (in total and various types), drinking frequency, and drinking with or without meals among 334,507 white British participants from the UK Biobank cohort. We found that genetically instrumented higher education (1 additional year) was significantly related to higher total amount of alcohol intake (inverse-variance weighted method (IVW): beta = 0.44, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.40–0.49, P = 1.57E−93). The causal relations with total amount and frequency of alcohol drinking were more evident among women. In analyses of different types of alcohol, higher educational attainment showed the strongest causal relation with more consumption of red wine (IVW beta = 0.34, 95% CI 0.32–0.36, P = 2.65E−247), followed by white wine/champagne, in a gender-specific manner. An inverse association was found for beer/cider and spirits. In addition, we found that 1 additional year of educational attainment was causally related to higher drinking frequency (IVW beta = 0.54, 95% CI 0.51–0.57, P = 4.87E−230) and a higher likelihood to take alcohol with meals (IVW: odds ratio (OR) = 3.10, 95% CI 2.93–3.29, P = 0.00E + 00). The results indicate causal relations of higher education with intake of more total alcohol especially red wine, and less beer/cider and spirits, more frequent drinking, and drinking with meals, suggesting the importance of improving drinking behaviors, especially among people with higher education.

在简单的观测结果中，教育与饮酒行为有关联。本文作者用UKB数据（33万左右的样本，英国白人样本），孟德尔随机化的方法，来探究受教育程度是否会直接影响饮酒行为-包括饮酒量（总的饮酒量和不同类型酒的饮酒量），饮酒的频率和吃饭时喝酒或不吃饭时喝酒的行为。研究发现更高的教育水平（增加一年的教育）显著与更高的酒精摄入总量相关。在妇女中教育水平与饮酒总量和饮酒频率的因果关系更为明显。对于不同种类的酒来说，更高的教育水平与更高的红酒摄入量存在最强的因果关系，随后是白葡萄酒/香槟。另外还发现了教育水平与啤酒/苹果酒和烈酒的反向关联，额外接受一年的教育与更高的饮酒频率有因果关系，也更可能在吃饭的时候喝酒。结果表明，更高的受教育水平与摄入更多的酒精，尤其是红酒，而更少喝啤酒/苹果酒和烈酒，更高的饮酒频率和进餐时饮酒之间存在因果关系。说明了改善饮酒行为的重要性，尤其是在受过高等教育的人群中。

See you tomorrow