Stroke risk from alcohol consumption using different control groups.

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Abstract
Our aim in this study was to investigate the relation between chronic alcohol consumption and stroke. A case-control study was carried out using two hospital-based control groups and the results of a community-based survey of alcohol consumption. Hospital-based control subjects were chosen either from "general" medical admissions or a subset of "select" admissions that excluded possible alcohol-related admissions. Cases were selected from hospital inpatients. The relative risk for stroke associated with alcohol consumption greater than 300 grams per week for general control subjects was 0.73 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.54-3.49) compared with 1.30 (95% CI, 0.42-4.05) for select control subjects. The odds ratio was further increased to 1.93 (95% CI, 0.87-4.28) using data from the community-based survey. None of these estimates were statistically significant. These results illustrate how the risk associated with alcohol consumption varies depending on the choice of control groups and may explain the contradictory results from previous case-control studies. Because of different biases associated with control selection, we believe that the results of this study are consistent with those of other studies that demonstrate a modest increased risk for stroke associated with alcohol consumption.