title: Alcohol and stroke: the splitters win again.
abstract: Study of the relationships of alcohol drinking and risk of stroke can readily become mired in the labyrinthine interactions of drinking categorizations, non-linear associations, disparate cardiovascular conditions, and the heterogeneous types of stroke. This Commentary discusses the recent article by Larsson et al. (BMC Medicine 14:178, 2016). The authors split their material into separate meta-analyses of subarachnoid hemorrhage, intracerebral hemorrhage, and ischemic stroke, finding disparate alcohol-stroke relationships. Our Commentary pursues the disparity theme, using the lumpers versus splitters paradigm to explore several aspects of this complex area.Please see related article: http://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-016-0721-4 .
authors.affiliation: Division of Research, Northern California Kaiser Permanente, 2000 Broadway, Oakland, CA, 94612, USA. hartmavn@pacbell.net.
authors.forename: Arthur L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Klatsky
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Oakland Medical Center, Northern California Kaiser Permanente, Oakland, CA, USA.
authors.forename: H Nicole
authors.initials: HN
authors.lastname: Tran
mesh_terms: D000428:Alcohol Drinking; D002543:Cerebral Hemorrhage; D006801:Humans; D012306:Risk; D012307:Risk Factors; D020521:Stroke
keywords: Alcohol drinking; Confounding; Epidemiology; Hemorrhagic stroke; Ischemic stroke; Non-linear curves; Risk factors; Stroke