Figure 3.

Associations of physiological factors with drinking patterns and with genotypic determinants of mean alcohol intake, in men

Conventional epidemiological analyses (A–C) relate self-reported drinking patterns at baseline to mean systolic blood pressure (A), HDL cholesterol (B), and γ-glutamyl transferase (C). Results are adjusted for age, area, education, income, and smoking. The means for current drinkers are plotted against usual alcohol intake, with a fitted line giving the slope (95% CI) per 280 g alcohol per week. Genetic epidemiological analyses (D–F) ignore individual drinking patterns, and for all men relate mean alcohol intake in six categories of genotype and study area to genotypic effects on mean systolic blood pressure (D), HDL cholesterol (E), and γ-glutamyl transferase (F). Results are adjusted for age and area. The slope of the fitted line is the inverse-variance-weighted mean of the slopes of the fitted lines in each study area. The area of each square in A–F is inversely proportional to the variance of the result. Error bars show 95% CIs.