No Alcohol Amount Is Safe

A comprehensive analysis of global burden of diseases, injuries, and risk factors concluded that alcohol use is a leading risk factor for disease burden worldwide, contributes to health loss from many causes and exacts its toll across the lifespan, and the safest level of drinking is none. The analysis used 694 data sources of individual and population-level alcohol consumption, along with 592 prospective and retrospective studies on the risk of alcohol use. Globally, alcohol use was the seventh leading risk factor for both deaths and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) in 2016, accounting for 2.2% of age-standardized female deaths and 6.8% of age-standardized male deaths. Among the population aged 15–49 years, alcohol use was the leading risk factor globally in 2016, with 3.8% of female deaths and 12.2% of male deaths attributable to alcohol use; female attributable DALYs were 2.3% and male attributable DALYs were 8.9%. The three leading causes of alcohol-attributable deaths in this age group were tuberculosis (1.4% of total deaths), road injuries (1.2%), and self-harm (1.1%). For populations aged 50 years and older, cancers accounted for a large proportion of total alcohol-attributable deaths in 2016: 27.1% of total alcohol-attributable female deaths and 18.9% of male deaths. The level of alcohol consumption that minimized harm across health outcomes was zero standard drinks (one drink defined as 10 g of pure ethyl alcohol) per week. The findings are consistent with growing evidence that no amount of alcohol is safe, and suggest that the widely held view of the health benefits of moderate alcohol needs to be revised. Source: https://www.thelancet.com/