Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Alcohol Intake on the Risk of Urolithiasis Including Dose-Response Relationship

<b><i>Objective:</i></b> We conducted a meta-analysis to quantitatively evaluate the correlation between alcohol consumption and the risk of urolithiasis by summarizing the results of published case-control and cohort studies and the potential dose-response association. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> A systematic literature search of articles up to February 2014 was conducted via PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Scopus, EMBASE, the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure databases, and the references of the retrieved articles. Fixed- or random-effect models were used to summarize the estimates of odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (95% CI) for the highest versus the lowest consumption of alcohol. A dose-response meta-analysis was also conducted. <b><i>Results:</i></b> The pooled OR estimates indicated that alcohol consumption was associated with a decreased risk of urolithiasis (OR = 0.683, 95% CI 0.577-0.808). In addition, the dose-response meta-analysis indicated that the rate of urolithiasis decreased by 10% for a 10 g/day increase in alcohol intake (OR = 0.898, 95% CI 0.851-0.948). No evidence of publication bias was found by Begg's or Egger's test (p = 0.130, p = 0.130, respectively). <b><i>Conclusion:</i></b> Our meta-analysis indicated that alcohol intake is associated with a decreased risk of urolithiasis.