Alcohol use and early mortality in Swedish middle-aged women: Nine-year follow-up of the Women’s Health in Lund Area study

Abstract

Aims: The majority of prospective studies on alcohol use and mortality risk indicate that nondrinkers are at increased risk of death compared to moderate drinkers. This paper investigates the association between middle-aged women's alcohol use and mortality, controlling for socio-demographic and health variables. An association between alcohol use and hospital inpatient care is also analysed.Methods: Baseline data were collected 1995-2000 in a population-based cohort of 6917 women aged 50-59 years living in southern Sweden, the Women's Health in Lund Area (WHILA). After nine years a register follow-up was performed from the National cause-ofdeath register and the Swedish hospital discharge register. Cox proportional hazards regression were used to analyse differences in survival.Results: During the observation period 201 (2.9%) women died. In a crude model nondrinkers had a significantly increased risk for death. When including socio-demographic predictors in the model there was a strong indication that non-drinkers were at increased risk for death compared to moderate drinkers. Adding health predictors, not drinking alcohol was no longer a risk factor for death. Further, analyses of in-patient care indicate that non-drinkers had poorer health during their entire adult life.Conclusions: This study underlines the importance of including health status at base-line when prospectively studying the association between alcohol use and mortality, otherwise moderate alcohol consumption may appear more beneficial than is the case.

Cardiovascular risk factors and hearing loss: The HUNT study

“…There was a protective effect also in our data, but the effect was negligible. Moderate alcohol consumption has been reported to be positively associated with socioeconomic status, and being an abstainer is often related to reduced health in the first place (Rundberg et al, 2014). Thus, different levels of controlling for socioeconomic status and health may explain some of the discrepancy with previous studies.…”

Association Between Daily Alcohol Intake and Risk of All-Cause Mortality

“…There were 724 estimates of the risk relationship between level of alcohol consumption and all-cause mortality from 107 unique studies, including 4 838 825 participants and 425 564 deaths available for the analysis. Table 1 describes the sample characteristics of the metadata.…”

“…Table 1 describes the sample characteristics of the metadata. Of 39 studiesreporting RR estimates for men and women separately, 33 were for males only, 8 for females only, and 30 for both sexes. Twenty-one studies (220 risk estimates) were free from abstainer bias (ie, had a reference group of strictly defined lifetime abstainers).…”

Alcohol Consumption and All-Cause Mortality: A Systematic Review

“…Four studies were conducted in all-male samples, 5,30,40,47 and four studies were in all-female samples. 27,33,44,48 intervention occurred or data was collected, the HDI classification for the year of publication was applied. HDI values are available from…”