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Alcohol use and burden for 195 countries and territories, 1990-2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016.

journal contribution
posted on 2019-08-20, 14:56 authored by GBD 2016 Alcohol Collaborators
BACKGROUND: Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for death and disability, but its overall association with health remains complex given the possible protective effects of moderate alcohol consumption on some conditions. With our comprehensive approach to health accounting within the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016, we generated improved estimates of alcohol use and alcohol-attributable deaths and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) for 195 locations from 1990 to 2016, for both sexes and for 5-year age groups between the ages of 15 years and 95 years and older. METHODS: Using 694 data sources of individual and population-level alcohol consumption, along with 592 prospective and retrospective studies on the risk of alcohol use, we produced estimates of the prevalence of current drinking, abstention, the distribution of alcohol consumption among current drinkers in standard drinks daily (defined as 10 g of pure ethyl alcohol), and alcohol-attributable deaths and DALYs. We made several methodological improvements compared with previous estimates: first, we adjusted alcohol sales estimates to take into account tourist and unrecorded consumption; second, we did a new meta-analysis of relative risks for 23 health outcomes associated with alcohol use; and third, we developed a new method to quantify the level of alcohol consumption that minimises the overall risk to individual health. FINDINGS: Globally, alcohol use was the seventh leading risk factor for both deaths and DALYs in 2016, accounting for 2·2% (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 1·5-3·0) of age-standardised female deaths and 6·8% (5·8-8·0) of age-standardised male deaths. Among the population aged 15-49 years, alcohol use was the leading risk factor globally in 2016, with 3·8% (95% UI 3·2-4·3) of female deaths and 12·2% (10·8-13·6) of male deaths attributable to alcohol use. For the population aged 15-49 years, female attributable DALYs were 2·3% (95% UI 2·0-2·6) and male attributable DALYs were 8·9% (7·8-9·9). The three leading causes of attributable deaths in this age group were tuberculosis (1·4% [95% UI 1·0-1·7] of total deaths), road injuries (1·2% [0·7-1·9]), and self-harm (1·1% [0·6-1·5]). For populations aged 50 years and older, cancers accounted for a large proportion of total alcohol-attributable deaths in 2016, constituting 27·1% (95% UI 21·2-33·3) of total alcohol-attributable female deaths and 18·9% (15·3-22·6) of male deaths. The level of alcohol consumption that minimised harm across health outcomes was zero (95% UI 0·0-0·8) standard drinks per week. INTERPRETATION: Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for global disease burden and causes substantial health loss. We found that the risk of all-cause mortality, and of cancers specifically, rises with increasing levels of consumption, and the level of consumption that minimises health loss is zero. These results suggest that alcohol control policies might need to be revised worldwide, refocusing on efforts to lower overall population-level consumption. FUNDING: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Funding

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number P30AG047845. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. Syed Mohamed Aljunid acknowledges the International Centre for Casemix and Clinical Coding, Faculty of Medicine, National University of Malaysia and Department of Health Policy and Management, Faculty of Public Health, Kuwait University for the approval and support to participate in this research project. Ashish Awasthi acknowledges funding support from Department of Science and Technology, Government of India through INSPIRE Faculty scheme. Tambe Betran Ayuk acknowledges the Institute of Medical Research and Medicinal Plant studies for institutional support. Peter Azzopardi is supported by a NHMRC Early Career Fellowship. Alaa Badawi is supported by the Public Health Agency of Canada. Shahrzad Bazargan-Hejazi was supported by NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS) UCLA CTSI Grant Number UL1TR001881. Juan J Carrero acknowledges support from the Swedish Heart and Lung Foundation. Felix Carvalho acknowledges the support of the European Union (FEDER funds POCI/01/0145/FEDER/007728 and POCI/01/0145/FEDER/007265) and National Funds (FCT/MEC, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia and Ministério da Educação e Ciência) under the Partnership Agreements PT2020 UID/MULTI/04378/2013 and PT2020 UID/QUI/50006/2013. Sheng-Chia Chung is supported by the MRC Population Health Scientist Fellowship (MR/M015084/1). José das Neves was supported in his contribution to this work by a Fellowship from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal (SFRH/BPD/92934/2013). Jan-Walter De Neve was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Louisa Degenhardt is supported by an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Senior Principal Re

History

Citation

Lancet, 2018, 392 (10152), pp. 1015-1035

Author affiliation

/Organisation/COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, ARTS AND HUMANITIES/School of Business

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Published in

Lancet

Publisher

Elsevier

eissn

1474-547X

Acceptance date

2018-05-30

Copyright date

2018

Available date

2019-08-20

Publisher version

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673618313102?via=ihub

Notes

Raw data underlying figures and relative risk curves have been made publicly available on Mendeley Data, a secure online repository for research data, as of September 19, 2018 (DOI:10.17632/5thy2mcwn7.1).

Language

en