Introduction
The aim of this study was to investigate the association between alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages and knee or hip osteoarthritis (OA).
Methods
We conducted a case–control study of Caucasian men and women aged 45 to 86 years of age from Nottingham, UK. Cases had clinically severe symptoms and radiographic knee or hip OA; controls had no symptoms and no radiographic knee or hip OA. Exposure information was sought using interview-based questionnaires and a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire to assess beverage consumption at ages 21 to 50 years. Odds ratios (ORs), adjusted ORs (aORs), 95% confidence intervals (CI) and P values were estimated using logistic regression models.
Results
A total of 1,001 knee OA, 993 hip OA and 933 control participants were included in the study. Increasing beer consumption was associated with an increasing risk of OA ( P for trend ≤0.001). Compared to those who did not consume beer, aORs for people who consumed 20 or more servings of beer were 1.93 (95% CI 1.26 to 2.94) and 2.15 (95% CI 1.45 to 3.19) for knee OA and hip OA, respectively. In contrast, increasing levels of wine consumption were associated with decreased likelihood of knee OA ( P for trend <0.001). Compared to those who did not consume wine, aOR for knee OA among those who consumed 4 to 6 glasses of wine per week and ≥7 glasses of wine per week was 0.55 (95% CI 0.34 to 0.87) and 0.48 (95% CI 0.29 to 0.80), respectively. No association was identified between non-alcoholic beverages and knee or hip OA.
Conclusions
Beer consumption appears to be a risk factor for knee and hip OA whereas consumption of wine has a negative association with knee OA. The mechanism behind these findings is speculative but warrants further study.