Premium
Daily Drinking Is Associated with Increased Mortality
Author(s) -
Hartz Sarah M.,
Oehlert Mary,
Horton AC,
Grucza Richard A.,
Fisher Sherri L.,
Culverhouse Robert C.,
Nelson Karl G.,
Sumerall Scott W.,
Neal Paul C.,
Regnier Patrice,
Chen Guoqing,
Williams Alexander,
Bhattarai Jagriti,
Evanoff Bradley,
Bierut Laura J.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
alcoholism: clinical and experimental research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.267
H-Index - 153
eISSN - 1530-0277
pISSN - 0145-6008
DOI - 10.1111/acer.13886
Subject(s) - medicine , national health interview survey , hazard ratio , demography , occupational safety and health , environmental health , injury prevention , national death index , proportional hazards model , poison control , mortality rate , confidence interval , population , pathology , sociology
Background There is evidence that low‐level alcohol use, drinking 1 to 2 drinks on occasion, is protective for cardiovascular disease, but increases the risk of cancer. Synthesizing the overall impact of low‐level alcohol use on health is therefore complex. The objective of this paper was to examine the association between frequency of low‐level drinking and mortality. Methods Two data sets with self‐reported alcohol use and mortality follow‐up were analyzed: 340,668 individuals from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and 93,653 individuals from the Veterans Health Administration (VA) outpatient medical records. Survival analyses were conducted to evaluate the association between low‐level drinking frequency and mortality. Results The minimum risk drinking frequency among those who drink 1 to 2 drinks per occasion was found to be 3.2 times weekly in the NHIS data, based on a continuous measure of drinking frequency, and 2 to 3 times weekly in the VA data. Relative to these individuals with minimum risk, individuals who drink 7 times weekly had an adjusted hazard ratio (HR) of all‐cause mortality of 1.23 ( p < 0.0001) in the NHIS data, and individuals who drink 4 to 7 times weekly in the VA data also had an adjusted HR of 1.23 ( p = 0.01). Secondary analyses in the NHIS data showed that the minimum risk was drinking 4 times weekly for cardiovascular mortality, and drinking monthly or less for cancer mortality. The associations were consistent in stratified analyses of men, women, and never smokers. Conclusions The minimum risk of low‐level drinking frequency for all‐cause mortality appears to be approximately 3 occasions weekly. The robustness of this finding is highlighted in 2 distinctly different data sets: a large epidemiological data set and a data set of veterans sampled from an outpatient clinic. Daily drinking, even at low levels, is detrimental to one's health.