Age at first drink and risk for alcoholism: a noncausal association.
Level 3 - non-randomized controlled study
Twin-pair observational cohort study evaluating familial confounding
What was done
Structured psychiatric interviews assessing lifetime DSM-IV alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence were conducted with 8,746 adult twins from a population-based twin registry. Twin-pair analyses evaluated whether the association between early drinking onset and later alcohol dependence was causal or accounted for by shared genetic and environmental factors.
What was found
Early drinking onset was strongly associated with risk for alcohol dependence, but showed less evidence of an association with alcohol abuse. Twin-pair analyses demonstrated that all of the association between early drinking and alcohol dependence was attributable to familial sources (shared environment and genetics), indicating a noncausal relationship. No numerical effect sizes, odds ratios, or confidence intervals were reported in the abstract.
Why it matters
This study suggests that early drinking onset is a marker of underlying familial risk rather than an independent causal factor for alcohol dependence. Interventions focused solely on delaying drinking onset may therefore fail to prevent the development of alcohol dependence.
Limits
The abstract provides no quantitative values, confidence intervals, or sample demographics (such as zygosity distribution, age, or sex). As a retrospective interview study, reporting of age at first drink is subject to recall bias.
Cited by
- context The age at which someone has their first alcoholic drink is one of the strongest determinants of whether they will develop alcoholism.