Our study has several limitations. First, we rely on a sample of middle-aged individuals of European ancestry living in the UK. We hope that future work will test the generalizability of our findings to individuals from other populations and in other age groups. It is reasonable to expect that the relationship we observe would differ in younger individuals who have not experienced the chronic effects of alcohol on the brain. An additional limitation stems from the self-reported alcohol intake measures in the UK Biobank, which cover only the year prior to participation. Such estimates may not adequately reflect drinking prior to the past year and are susceptible to reporting and recall bias38,39.
