A study on older adults finds that even low-risk drinking was linked to greater mortality in those with health or socioeconomic risk factors.
Specifically, low-risk drinkers had higher death rates from cancer while moderate-risk drinkers had higher all-cause and cancer mortality. High-risk drinkers had higher all-cause, cancer and cardiovascular disease death risks.
Findings were published Monday in JAMA Network Open.
Researchers looked at drinking patterns of more than 135,000 drinkers in the UK with a median age of 64. Drinking patterns were classified as occasional, low risk, moderate risk, and high risk. Some UK drinking guidelines say to stay under 14 units a week to keep health risks from alcohol low. The NHS warns that 14 units is about 6 pints of average-strength beer or 10 small glasses of lower-strength wine.
Compared with occasional drinking, high-risk drinking was associated with a 1.33 times greater risk for cancer and a 1.21 times higher risk for cardiovascular death. Moderate drinking came with a 1.1 times higher risk for cancer and a 1.15 times higher risk for cardiovascular death.
Among those with socioeconomic or health-related risk factors — such as living in a lower-income neighborhood or having an existing health issue — low-risk drinking still was associated with a 1.15 times greater risk of dying with cancer. Low-risk and moderate-risk drinking patterns were associated with a 1.14 times and 1.17 times higher mortality from all causes, respectively; low-risk drinkers were 1.25 times more likely to die from cancer and moderate-risk drinkers were 1.36 times more likely to die from cancer, the data showed.
Data didn’t compare mortality for people with low- or moderate-risk drinking patterns and without socioeconomic or health-related risk factors with occasional drinkers.
Wine preference and drinking only with meals were associated with driving the excess mortality that was associated with drinking alcohol, the data showed.
