

Reference lists of identified works were scanned for other potentially relevant material. Articles were identified for further examination by title or abstract full text articles were retained for analysis if they dealt with acute (within dose) alcohol tolerance in human subjects and provided quantitative data on both the ascending and descending parts of the BAC–time curve. Methods: We systematically searched the databases EMBASE, Medline, and Scopus up to and including December 2016 using text words “tolerance”, “ascending”, “descending” or “Mellanby” with Medline term “exp *alcohol/” or “exp *drinking behavior/” or equivalent.

Objective: To review the evidence for “the Mellanby effect”, that is, whether the response to a given blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is more marked when BAC is rising than at the same concentration when BAC is falling.
