A recent global study, conducted by 512 researchers from 243 institutions, showed that the level of alcohol consumption that minimized harmful health consequences was zero (95% UI 0.0-0.8). Using 692 data sources of individual and population-level alcohol consumption, along with 592 prospective and retrospective studies on the risk of alcohol use, the researchers produced estimates of the prevalence of drinking, as well as alcohol-attributable deaths and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) for 195 locations from 1990 to 2016, for box sexes and for 5-year age groups between the ages of 15 and 95 years or older.
Globally, alcohol use was the seventh leading risk factor for both deaths and DALYs in 2016, accounting for 2.2% of age-standardized female deaths and 6.8% of male deaths. Among the population of 15–49-year-olds, alcohol accounted for 3.8% of female deaths and 12.2% of male deaths. For this age group, female attributable DALYs were 2.3%, and male attributable DALYs were 8.9%. The three leading causes of death in this age group were road injuries, tuberculosis, and self-harm. For populations over 50 years old, cancer accounted for a considerable proportion of total alcohol-attributed deaths in 2016, with 27.1% of female deaths and 18.9% male deaths. Results suggest that alcohol use is a leading risk factor for global disease burden, and carries with it serious health consequences. Since the level of alcohol consumption that minimized health loss is zero, alcohol restriction policies may need to be reformed world-wide.
GBD 2016 Alcohol Collaborators. Alcohol use and burden for 195 countries and territories,
1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016. The Lancet 2018;Epub ahead of print.
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