Alcohol consumption and adiposity

The authors of a study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health say that the evidence on the association between alcohol consumption and adiposity is inconsistent and fragmented.
Their work investigated the longitudinal association between alcohol consumption pattern and four different adiposity markers with repeated measures of adiposity and obesity incidence. Researchers categorised current drinkers based on the sex-specific quartiles of their weekly alcohol consumption and the UK alcohol drinking guidelines.
With the exception of a direct association between alcohol volume and body fat percentage (BF%) in women (B = 0.42%; 95%CI: 0.04, 0.80% for women in the top quartile), no associations between alcohol consumption and adiposity markers were found for either sex. Red wine and champagne/white wine consumption were inversely associated with waist circumference for both sexes (B = -0.58 cm, (95%CI: -0.77, -0.38 cm) and B= -0.49 cm, (95%CI: -0.68, -0.29 cm), respectively, for women; B = -0.28 cm, (95%CI: -0.47, -0.08 cm) and B = -0.23 cm, (95%CI: -0.42, -0.04 cm), respectively, for men).
Female and male spirit drinkers had higher waist circumference than non-spirit drinkers. Alcohol consumption was associated with a lower risk of obesity incidence in women (OR:0.60, (95%CI:0.45, 0.80) for the 2nd quartile, OR:0.53, (95%CI: 0.40, 0.70) for the 3rd quartile and OR:0.61, (95%CI:0.46, 0.80) for the 4th quartile).
The authors state that the study found limited evidence of longitudinal associations between alcohol intake and adiposity. The few statistically significant associations they observed are unlikely to be of clinical importance.
Source: Inan-Eroglu E, Huang B-H, Hamer M, Britton A, Stamatakis E. Alcohol Consumption and Ad-iposity: A Longitudinal Analysis of 45,399 UK Biobank Participants. International Journal of Environ-mental Research and Public Health. 2022; 19(19):11945.