Risks for older drinkers heightened by health problems and deprivation

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-08-13 01:00

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Even low-risk drinking causes higher mortality in adults over 60 with health-related or socioeconomic risk factors. A study of over 135,000 UK adults over the age of 60 described as occasional to high-risk drinkers based on daily alcohol intake looked at possible links between deaths, drinking, and health or socioeconomic risks. Moderate- to high-risk drinking was associated with more deaths overall, but low- or moderate-risk drinking was also linked to increased deaths, particularly cancer deaths, in adults scoring higher for frailty or deprivation. This increase did not affect those who preferred wine and drank only with meals, however the authors caution that this requires further investigation.

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Journal/
conference: JAMA Network Open

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain

Funder: This work was supported by the Plan Nacional sobre Drogas, Ministry of Health of Spain (grant No. 2020/17), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, State Secretary of R+D+I and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional/Fondo Social Europeo (Fondo de Investigación en Salud grants No. 19/319, 20/896, and 22/1111), Agencia Estatal de Investigación (grant No. CNS2022-135623), Carlos III Health Institute and the European Union “NextGenerationEU (grant No. PMP21/00093), and the Fundación Francisco Soria Melguizo (Papel de la Disfunción Mitocondrial en la Relación Entre Multimorbilidad Crónica y Deterioro Funcional en Ancianos project grant). Mercedes Sotos-Prieto holds a Ramón y Cajal contract (contract No. RYC-2018-025069-I) from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.

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