Risk function had peculiar properties

BMJ 1995;311:1167 (28 October)

Letters

Risk function had peculiar properties

EDITOR,--Morten Gronbaek and colleagues' study of mortalityassociated with moderate intakes of wine, beer, or spirits presentsrelative risks of death as functions of consumption of eachtype of beverage.¹ Apparently none of the first order interactionsbetween levels of consumption of different beverages were significant.Ignoring interactions, however, leads to a model with peculiarproperties, for it implies that one can simply multiply therelative risks for each type of beverage.

Thus the authors' estimates imply that a person drinking threeto five drinks daily of each of wine, beer, and spirits (a totalof nine to 15 drinks daily) has a relative risk of death fromcoronary heart disease of 0.43 compared with someone who neverdrinks alcohol. For deaths from other causes the relative riskbetween these two extreme groups of people is 0.82. Such estimatesare hard to take seriously, so the model clearly cannot be . . . [Full text of this article]

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Relevant Article

Mortality associated with moderate intakes of wine, beer, or spirits: Morten Gronbaek, Allan Deis, Thorkild I A Sorensen, Ulrik Becker, Peter Schnohr, and Gorm Jensen
BMJ 1995 310: 1165-1169. [Abstract] [Full Text]

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