Light drinking may raise mortality, cancer risk for older adults with certain risk factors

Key takeaways:

• Low-risk drinking linked to higher mortality individuals with socioeconomic or health-related risk factors.
• A wine preference and drinking with meals attenuated additional risk.

Low levels of alcohol consumption may be associated with increased mortality risk in adults with health-related or socioeconomic risk factors, results from a recent analysis suggested.

Additional findings from the prospective cohort study — published in JAMA Network Open — showed that a preference for wine and drinking only with meals may diminish the excess morality risk associated with alcohol consumption.

According to Rosario Ortolá, MD, PhD, from the Autonomous University of Madrid, and colleagues, the impact of alcohol consumption may be greater in adults with socioeconomic and health-related risk factors “due to their greater morbidity, higher use of alcohol-interacting drugs, and reduced tolerance.”

However, some studies have demonstrated beneficial effects from alcohol consumption — especially light consumption — on unhealthy aging or frailty, “suggesting that the protective associations of these potentially beneficial drinking patterns might be greater in individuals with ill health,” they added in JAMA Network Open.

Ortolá and colleagues conducted a prospective cohort study using a sample of 135,103 current drinkers aged 60 years and older from the U.K. Biobank study.

Researchers evaluated health-related and socioeconomic risk factors with the frailty index and Townsend deprivation index, respectively; meanwhile, they categorized drinking patterns as:

• occasional (less than or equal to 2.86 g a day)
• low risk (greater than 2.86 to 20 g a day in men and greater than 2.86 to 10 g a day in women);
• moderate risk (greater than 20 to 40 g a day in men and greater than 10 to 20 g a day in women); and
• high risk (greater than 40 g a day in men and greater than 20 g a day in women).

The researchers reported associations between high-risk drinking and increased mortality risk from all causes (HR = 1.33; 95% CI, 1.24-1.42), cancer mortality (HR, 1.39; 95% CI, 1.26-1.53) and cardiovascular mortality (HR = 1.21; 95% CI, 1.04-1.41) vs. occasional drinking.

Meanwhile, they observed associations among those reporting moderate-risk drinking and increased risk for mortality from all-causes (HR = 1.1; 95% CI, 1.03-1.18) and cancer mortality (HR = 1.15; 95% CI, 1.05-1.27). The analysis also showed a link between low-risk drinking and a higher risk for cancer mortality (HR = 1.11; 95% CI, 1.01-1.22) in all participants.

Ortolá and colleagues noted an association between low-risk drinking and a higher risk for cancer mortality (HR = 1.15; 95% CI, 1.05-1.27) in older adults. They also found associations between moderate-risk drinking and a higher mortality risk from all-causes (HR = 1.1; 95% CI, 1.03-1.18) and cancer (HR = 1.19; 95% CI, 1.05-1.35) in older adults.

Researchers reported similar results among those with socioeconomic risk factors, noting associations among low-risk and moderate-risk drinking and a higher mortality risk from all causes (low risk: HR = 1.14; 1.01-1.28; moderate risk: HR = 1.17; 95% CI, 1.03-1.32) and cancer (low risk: HR = 1.25; 95% CI, 1.04-1.5; moderate risk: HR = 1.36; 95% CI, 1.13-1.63).

The researchers pointed out that a wine preference — defined as 80% of alcohol consumed coming from wine — and drinking with meals had “small protective associations” with mortality but observed this trend only in drinkers with socioeconomic or health-related risk factors.

Additionally, wine preference and drinking with meals attenuated mortalities associated with high-risk, moderate-risk and low-risk drinking, they added.

The findings have significant implications “because they identify inequalities in the detrimental health outcomes associated with alcohol that should be addressed to reduce the high burden of disease of alcohol use,” Ortolá and colleagues concluded.