Excessive alcohol use accounts for one in eight deaths in US adults

Excessive alcohol use was attributed to 12.9% of deaths among Americans aged 20 to 64 years from 2015 to 2019, a new study revealed.

In the United States’ recent past, death rates from alcohol-attributable causes have continually increased, and alcohol consumption remains a leading preventable cause of death today, according to the study published in JAMA Network Open.

Marissa B. Esser, PhD, of the CDC’s division of population health and National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, and colleagues conducted a population-based cross-sectional study to learn more about the prevalence of deaths from excessive alcohol use by sex, age group and state.

The researchers assessed mortality data from the National Vital Statistics System. They adjusted mean daily alcohol consumption among the 2 million respondents to the 2015-2019 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System with national per capita alcohol sales “to correct for underreporting.” It was adjusted to 73% of national per capita alcohol sales “to align with alcohol use reported in U.S. epidemiologic cohort studies,” the researchers wrote.

Esser and colleagues reported that approximately 140,557 people — 69.1% of whom were men — died because of excessive alcohol use every year between 2015 and 2019, and about one in eight deaths in Americans aged 20 to 64 years could be attributed to excessive alcohol use during this time period.

The researchers also found that, in people aged 20 to 49 years, excessive alcohol use was responsible for one in five deaths. Additionally, the percentage of deaths by excessive alcohol consumption was higher among men than women — 15% vs. 9.4%

When it came to geographic location, Esser and colleagues estimated that the prevalence of alcohol-attributable deaths ranged from 9.3% of total deaths in Mississippi to 21.7% in New Mexico.

The researchers noted that death rates involving alcohol use rose in 2020, and “therefore, the proportion of deaths due to excessive drinking among total deaths might be higher than reported in this study.”

“Nevertheless, these study findings are consistent with the epidemiology of excessive drinking,” they wrote. “For example, the prevalence of binge drinking is generally higher among younger adults, and this population tends to consume more alcohol while binge drinking, which contributes to their leading causes of alcohol-attributable deaths.”

Implementing more evidence-based, population-level alcohol policies like regulating alcohol outlet density or increasing alcohol taxes could reduce the number of premature deaths, the researchers concluded.

References:

• Esser MB, et al. JAMA Netw Open. 2022;doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.39485.
• Estimated deaths attributable to excessive alcohol use among US adults. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/969610. Published Nov. 1, 2022. Accessed Nov. 16, 2022.