Alcohol Intake and Risk of Hypertension: A Systematic Review and Dose-Response Meta-Analysis of Nonexperimental Cohort Studies.

Background: Alcohol consumption has been associated with higher blood pressure and an increased risk of hypertension. However, the possible exposure thresholds and effect-modifiers are uncertain.

Methods: We assessed the dose-response relationship between usual alcohol intake and hypertension incidence in nonexperimental cohort studies.

Alcohol Intake and Blood Pressure Levels: A Dose-Response Meta-Analysis of Nonexperimental Cohort Studies.

Background: Alcohol consumption may increase blood pressure but the details of the relationship are incomplete, particularly for the association at low levels of alcohol consumption, and no meta-analyses are available for nonexperimental cohort studies.

Methods: We performed a systematic search of longitudinal studies in healthy adults that reported on the association between alcohol intake and blood pressure. Our end points were the mean differences over time of systolic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP), plotted according to baseline alcohol intake, by using a dose-response 1-stage meta-analytic methodology.

The association between first and second wave COVID-19 mortality in Italy.

Background: The relation between the magnitude of successive waves of the COVID-19 outbreak within the same communities could be useful in predicting the scope of new outbreaks.

Methods: We investigated the extent to which COVID-19 mortality in Italy during the second wave was related to first wave mortality within the same provinces. We compared data on province-specific COVID-19 2020 mortality in two time periods, corresponding to the first wave (February 24-June 30, 2020) and to the second wave (September 1-December 31, 2020), using cubic spline regression.

SARS-CoV-2 infection incidence during the first and second COVID-19 waves in Italy.

We assessed the relation between COVID-19 waves in Italy, which was severely affected during the pandemic. We evaluated the hypothesis that a larger impact from the first wave (February-May 2020) predicts a smaller peak during the second wave (September-October 2020), in the absence of local changes in public health interventions and area-specific differences in time trends of environmental parameters. Based on publicly available data on province-specific SARS-CoV-2 infections and both crude and multivariable cubic spline regression models, we found that for provinces with the lowest incidence rates in the first wave, the incidence in the second wave increased roughly in proportion with the incidence in the first wave until an incidence of about 500-600 cases/100,000 in the first wave.