Rise in alcohol use during pandemic endures as 'an alarming public health issue'
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Key takeaways:
- The increased levels of alcohol use from the COVID-19 pandemic remained at least through 2022.
- Researchers wrote that this highlights a concerning public health issue.
Alcohol use increased during the COVID-19 pandemic but has not declined since its end, according to research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Results from the cross-sectional analysis showed increases in both overall and heavy drinking during the pandemic period that remained through 2022 compared with data from 2018.
In the United States, alcohol is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality, Divya Ayyala-Somayajula, MD, a clinician at Jefferson Health, and colleagues wrote.
“The COVID-19 pandemic was associated with increases in stress-related drinking and alcohol-related deaths,” they wrote. “Analyses of whether increased alcohol use has persisted since the pandemic and trends among subpopulations could inform public policy and health care initiatives to mitigate alcohol-related morbidity and mortality.”
In their population-based study, Ayyala-Somayajula and colleagues used data from adults who participated in the National Health Interview Surveys (26,806 from 2022, 30,829 from 2020 and 24,965 from 2018).Compared with 2018 data, the researchers found that in 2020, any alcohol use rose 2.6% (95% CI, 1.28-4.1), an increase sustained through 2022, at 2.96% (95% CI, 1.58-4.33). Additionally, heavy alcohol use rose 1.03% in 2020 (95% CI, 0.55-1.51), and the number remained about the same in 2022, at 1.18% (95% CI, 0.7-1.67).
Researchers reported a 4% relative increase for any alcohol use in tandem with a 20.2% rise in heavy alcohol use.
They additionally noted that, for any alcohol use, numerical increases occurred in all subgroups (broken down by sex, age, race, ethnicity and region) in 2020 and 2022. For heavy alcohol use, numerical increases occurred in 2020 and 2022 among all subgroups except those identifying as Asian or American Indian in 2022.
“Our results provide national data to draw further attention to the potential alcohol-related public health effects that may remain from the pandemic,” the researchers wrote.
The findings “highlight an alarming public health issue that may require a combination of policy changes,” Ayyala-Somayajula and colleagues concluded.
"Increased screening efforts for harmful drinking with systematic integration and rapid linkage to behavioral health treatments by health care professionals, in tandem with community-based interventions for at-risk populations, should be considered to mitigate the public health consequences of the pandemic-related increase in alcohol use,” they wrote.