Alcohol Linked to Death and Disability: Drinking Increases Disease Burden

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise, but scientists have now found that disorders related to the abuse of alcohol contribute significantly to the burden of disease in the U.S. What is surprising, though, is how large the numbers are. In fact, researchers estimated that in 2005 about 53,000 men and 12,000 women died from issues related to alcohol use disorders (AUD).

"We had done meta-analyses on AUD before and knew it would be higher than previous literature, but we did not expect the burden for disease to be so high," said Jurgen Rehm, one of the researchers, in a news release.

Previous research has shown that heavy drinking is a risk factor for more than 200 diseases or injuries. In this particular study, though, the researchers had to quantify the influence of alcohol use on the burden of disease. In order to do so, they analyzed information from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions and the burden of disease study of the National Institutes of Health. In the end, they found that AUD was linked to three percent of all deaths in adults 18 and older in the U.S.

Needless to say, this is a huge issue. Yet one of the problems of AUD is that it's a fairly new term and that everyone in the field defines it differently. For example, alcohol can lead to death in traffic accidents, but this may have nothing to do with addiction or abuse. That said, the new study does bring light to a growing problem.

"There needs to be restrictions on the availability of alcohol," said Rehm in a news release. "Increases in taxation or bans of advertisements are not part of health care, and this is part of the problem. The most realistic short-term goal is probably an increase in brief intervention and treatment rates."

The findings are published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.