ORs were pooled using the method of DerSimonian and Laird (DerSimonian and Laird 1986), and 95% CIs were constructed using Woolf’s method (Woolf 1955). The significance of the overall OR was determined using the Z test. To measure sensitivity of our analysis results, each study was removed in turn from the total, and the remainder then reanalyzed. This procedure was used to ensure that no individual study was entirely responsible for the combined results. Both allelic and genotypic analyses (e.g., dominant model) were applied, and different combinations of the alcohol-related medical conditions (e.g., alcohol liver disease, cirrhosis, and pancreatitis) were also analyzed. Retrospective analysis was performed to better understand the potential effect of year of publication upon the results. The type I error rate was set at 0.05. The tests were two-tailed.
