Annual cost of alcohol-associated liver disease projected to reach $66B by 2040
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Key takeaways:
- Annual costs associated with alcohol-associated liver disease are expected to rise from $31 billion in 2022 to $66 billion in 2040.
- Costs among women will increase from 29% to 43% of total annual expenditure.
Researchers have estimated that annual costs associated with alcohol-associated liver disease will climb from $31 billion in 2022 to $66 billion in 2040 — a 118% increase — with costs among women accounting for 43% of the total expenditure.
“With alcohol-associated mortality rising over the previous decades and significant consumption increases during the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic burden of ALDs can be expected to grow,” Jovan Julien, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital Institute for Technology Assessment, and colleagues wrote in American Journal of Gastroenterology. “Although economic burden has begun to be studied, current economic losses are unavailable. In addition, future trends in economic burden have yet to be fully evaluated.”
They continued: “Such estimates and projections could inform appropriate policies to curb the rising disease burden and provide potential cost savings achievable by interventions that reduce the ALD burden.”
Using the previously validated Alcohol Policy Simulation Model, researchers estimated current and future costs associated with direct health care spending, productivity loss and premature mortality as a result of alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD) in the U.S. They included data from the National Epidemiologic Survey Alcohol and Related Conditions-III, CDC Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER), Bureau of Labor Statistics and published studies on the effects of alcohol consumption on ALD severity.
According to results, the estimated annual costs associated with ALD will increase by 118%, from $31 (95% CI, 29-32) billion in 2022 to $66 (95% CI, 64-69) billion in 2040. During this time, ALD “could sap the U.S. economy” $880 (95% CI, 845-915) billion, which includes $355 billion in direct health care-related costs and $525 billion in lost labor and economic consumption.
Among women, annual alcohol-associated costs are projected to increase by 231%, from $9 (95% CI, 8-9) billion in 2022 to $29 (95% CI, 28-30) billion in 2040, while among men, an increase of 72% — from $22 (95% CI, 21-23) billion to $38 (95% CI, 36-39) billion — is projected. Although alcohol-associated costs among women made up 29% of total costs in 2022, they are expected to make up 43% of the total annual expenditure by 2040.
Researchers noted the increase in total care costs “is largely predicated on increases in decompensated cirrhosis costs of care,” with annual costs projected to increase by 185% ($6.2 billion-$17.7 billion). In addition, attributable annual costs for compensated cirrhosis are expected to rise by 157% ($2.3 billion-$5.9 billion), compared with 100% ($1.1 billion-$2.2 billion) for early liver fibrosis stages 1 to 3 and 147% ($730 million-$1.8 billion) for hepatocellular carcinoma.
“Our study estimates a substantial population-level cost burden of ALD in the United States and projects increasing trends in these costs faced by the U.S. population and health care system in years to come,” Julien and colleagues wrote. “Our findings highlight the substantial economic and disease burden of current consumption patterns and the need for policy and cultural shifts to address the growing societal burden associated with ALD.”
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