Excessive drinking kills more than 93k Americans every year, shortening lives by 29 years: CDC research
Excessive drinking is a leading cause of preventable death in the US and is associated with numerous health and social problems. From 2011 to 2015, excessive alcohol use was responsible for an average of 93,296 deaths each year in the US. This means that an average of 255 Americans die from excessive drinking every day, shortening their lives by an average of 29 years, say researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The majority of these alcohol-attributable deaths involved males, and approximately four in five deaths involved adults 35 years and older. The number of alcohol-attributable deaths among adults 65 years and above was nearly double that among adults aged 20-34 years. Of all alcohol-attributable deaths, 51,078 (54.7%) were caused by chronic conditions. However, acute alcohol-attributable deaths, all of which were caused by binge drinking, accounted for the majority of the years of potential life lost from excessive drinking.
“During 2011-2015 in the US, an average of 93,296 alcohol-attributable deaths occurred, and 2.7 million years of potential life were lost annually. Among the 93,296 deaths, 51,078 (54.7%) were caused by chronic conditions and 42,218 (45.2%) by acute conditions. Of the 2.7 million years of potential life lost (29 years lost per death, on average), 1.1 million (41.1%) were because of chronic conditions, and 1.6 million (58.8%) were because of acute conditions. Overall, 66,519 (71.3%) alcohol-attributable deaths and 1.9 million (70.8%) years of potential life lost involved males,” says the study published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) of the CDC.
The research team also includes experts from the University of Victoria, British Columbia; Boston Medical Center, Massachusetts; Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health, Massachusetts; State of Washington Office of Financial Management; and New Mexico Department of Health. “Among all alcohol-attributable deaths, 52,361 (56.1%) involved adults aged 35-64 years, 24,766 (26.5%) involved adults 65 years and above, and 13,910 (14.9%) involved young adults aged 20-34 years,” write authors.
According to the CDC, excessive drinking includes binge drinking, heavy drinking, and any drinking by pregnant women or people younger than age 21. Binge drinking, the most common form of excessive drinking, is defined as drinking five or more drinks at a time for men, and four or more for women during a single occasion. It could also be drinking heavily over the course of the week: 15 drinks or more for men per week, and eight or more for women.
In the US, a standard drink contains 0.6 ounces (14 grams or 1.2 tablespoons) of pure alcohol. Generally, this amount of pure alcohol is found in 12 ounces of beer (5% alcohol content), 8 ounces of malt liquor (7% alcohol content), 5 ounces of wine (12% alcohol content), 1.5 ounces of 80-proof (40% alcohol content) distilled spirits or liquor (such as gin, rum, vodka, whiskey).
For the current study, the CDC used the Alcohol-Related Disease Impact (ARDI) application to estimate national and state average annual alcohol-attributable deaths and years of potential life lost during 2011-2015, including deaths from one’s excessive drinking (such as liver disease) and from others’ drinking (such as passengers killed in alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes).
The researchers found that little progress has been made in preventing deaths caused by excessive drinking. The average annual estimates of alcohol-attributable deaths and the years of potential life lost in this report are slightly higher than estimates for 2006–2010, and the age-adjusted alcohol-attributable death rates are similar, suggesting that excessive drinking remains a leading preventable cause of death and disability. From 2006-2010 to 2011-2015, the average annual deaths caused by alcohol dependence increased by 14.2%, from 3,728 to 4,258, and deaths caused by alcoholic liver disease increased by 23.6%, from 14,695 to 18,164.
The national average annual age-adjusted alcohol-attributable death rate was 27.4 per 100,000, and the years of potential life lost per 100,000 was 847.7. The average annual number of alcohol-attributable deaths and years of potential life lost varied across states, ranging from 203 alcohol-attributable deaths in Vermont to 10,811 in California, and from 5,074 years of potential life lost in Vermont to 299,336 in California. The analysis also reveals that age-adjusted alcohol-attributable deaths per 100,000 population ranged from 20.3 in New Jersey and New York to 52.3 in New Mexico. The years of potential life lost per 100,000 population ranged from 613.8 in New York to 1,651.7 in New Mexico.
Alcoholic liver disease was the leading chronic cause of alcohol-attributable deaths overall (18,164) and among males (12,887) and females (5,277). Poisonings that involved another substance in addition to alcohol (such as drug overdoses) were the leading acute cause of alcohol-attributable deaths overall (11,839) and among females (4,315). Suicide associated with excessive alcohol use was the leading acute cause of alcohol-attributable deaths among males (7,711). “Conditions wholly attributable to alcohol accounted for 29,068 (31.2%) of all alcohol-attributable deaths and 762,241 (28.4%) of all years of potential life lost,” the findings state.
The implementation of effective population-based strategies for preventing excessive drinking, such as those recommended by the community preventive services task force — for example, increasing alcohol taxes and regulating the number and concentration of alcohol outlets — could reduce alcohol-attributable deaths and years of potential life lost, says the team. According to the authors, these strategies can complement other population-based prevention strategies that focus on health risk behaviors associated with excessive alcohol use, such as safer prescribing practices to reduce opioid misuse and overdoses and alcohol-impaired driving interventions.