 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
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| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Lisa Giuli, BA1, Robert Gould, PhD2, Jane J Jun, BA2, Keifei Zhou, MS3, and Alison A. Moore, MD, MPH4. (1) Weill College of Medicine at Cornell University, 1300 York Ave, New York, NY 10021, 212-821-0500, giuli@stanfordalumni.org, (2) Statistics, University of California at Los Angeles, Box 951554 9410 BH, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1554, (3) Medicine/Geriatrics, University of California at Los Angeles, 10945 Le Conte Ave, Suite 2339, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1687, (4) School of Medicine, UCLA, 10945 Le Conte Avenue, Suite 2339, Los Angeles, CA 90095
Background: The Alcohol-Related Problems Survey, a measure assessing risks of alcohol with comorbidity among older persons, trichotomizes drinkers into harmful, hazardous and nonhazardous risk groups. To assess whether harmful and hazardous drinkers have increased mortality as compared to nonhazardous drinkers, we examined the association between these risk groups and mortality among 1856 drinkers ³ age 60.
Methods: Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES ) I (1971-75), we constructed harmful, hazardous and nonhazardous risk groups. We then used mortality data from the NHANES I Epidemiologic Followup Survey (NHEFS) (1982-84) to determine if those identified as harmful or hazardous drinkers had increased mortality as compared to nonhazardous drinkers.
Results: In NHANES I 10% of older drinkers were harmful drinkers (13% of men; 7% of women) and 28% were hazardous drinkers (27% of men; 24% of women). In adjusted analyses, there was a gradient of increasing risk for mortality among harmful and hazardous drinkers as compared to nonhazardous drinkers (Table). However in analyses stratified by gender, harmful drinking men had statistically significant increased mortality risks but other groups did not.
Conclusions: Harmful drinking is associated with increased mortality among older men but not women. These gender differences may be due to fewer women who were harmful drinkers or because women do not have increased risks from the combination of drinking and comorbidity.
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Harmful Drinkers Hazard Ratio (95%CI) |
Hazardous Drinkers Hazard Ratio (95%CI) |
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All |
1.6 (1.3-2.1) |
1.2 (0.99-1.4) |
|
Men |
1.6 (1.2-2.2) |
1.2 (0.99-1.5) |
|
Women |
1.7 (1.0-3.0) |
1.3 (0.90-1.9) |
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Alcohol, Aging
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.