Alcohol, cardiovascular disease and industry funding: A co-authorship network analysis of systematic reviews.
Level 4 - case-series / case-control
Cross-sectional bibliometric and co-authorship network analysis (graded by design analogy, not clinical CEBM)
PubMed 34607052 · doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114450
What was done
The authors identified systematic reviews on alcohol consumption and cardiovascular disease (CVD) using the Epistemonikos database. They performed a co-authorship network analysis examining review characteristics, co-authorship subnetworks, author histories of alcohol industry funding, reported outcomes, and citation rates.
What was found
Across 60 systematic reviews with 231 unique authors, 14 reviews had authors with prior histories of alcohol industry funding (including 5 directly industry-funded). 100% (14/14) of these reviews reported a cardioprotective effect of alcohol and formed distinct co-authorship subnetworks. Among 46 reviews with no industry funding history, 54% (25/46) concluded alcohol had protective effects. Industry-associated reviews were more likely to assess broad endpoints like 'cardiovascular disease' or 'coronary heart disease' rather than specific conditions such as stroke or hypertension (93% [13/14] vs 41% [19/46], p < 0.001), included more studies on average (mean 29 vs 20), and were more widely cited.
Why it matters
This study demonstrates that author ties to the alcohol industry strongly correlate with unanimous reports of health benefits, broader outcome selection, and distinct citation networks in the CVD evidence base.
Limits
The bibliometric and network design shows associations rather than direct causal bias. The sample was restricted to systematic reviews indexed in Epistemonikos. The abstract does not evaluate the underlying methodological quality of each review or assess primary study-level risk of bias.
Cited by
- supports A 2021 analysis found that 14 of 16 (nearly 25% of evaluated) systematic reviews on alcohol and cardiovascular disease had ties to alcohol industry funding, and all of these reviews reported a cardioprotective effect.
- supports In the 2021 analysis of alcohol research, only about 50% of reviews without industry funding concluded that alcohol had health-protective effects.