Alcohol Drinking and Mortality among Men Enrolled in an American Cancer Society Prospective Study

We studied whether moderate alcohol drinkers have a lower total and coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality than nondrinkers. Among 276,802 U.S. men aged 40–59 enrolled in 1959 in an American Cancer Society prospective study, 42,756 deaths, 18,771 from CHD, occurred during the following 12 years (3%...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.) Mass.), 1990-09, Vol.1 (5), p.342-348
Main Authors: Boffetta, Paolo, Garfinkel, Lawrence
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Alcohol Drinking
Alcohols
Cancer
Cause of Death
Cigarette smoking
Cohort Studies
Congenital heart defects
Coronary artery disease
Coronary Disease - epidemiology
Coronary Disease - mortality
Coronary Disease - prevention & control
Epidemiology
Humans
International Statistical Classification of Diseases
Male
Middle Aged
Mortality
Neoplasms - mortality
Prospective Studies
Risk Factors
Smoking - adverse effects
Surveys and Questionnaires
Tobacco smoking
United States
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We studied whether moderate alcohol drinkers have a lower total and coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality than nondrinkers. Among 276,802 U.S. men aged 40–59 enrolled in 1959 in an American Cancer Society prospective study, 42,756 deaths, 18,771 from CHD, occurred during the following 12 years (3% of the cohort was lost to follow-up). Using nondrinkers (55.3% of the cohort) as a reference category, age- and smoking-stratified relative risks (RR) of total mortality were 0.88 for occasional drinkers, 0.84 for those drinking 1 drink per day, 0.93, 1.02, 1.08, 1.22, and 1.38 for those drinking 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 or more drinks per day, respectively. RRs of CHD mortality were 0.86, 0.79, 0.80, 0.83, 0.74, 0.85, and 0.92, respectively. Multivariate analysis failed to identify other confounders. No changes in RRs were introduced by excluding subjects with poor health or history of chronic disease at enrollment (32.8% of the cohort) or excluding subjects who died during the first 6 years of follow-up. These data indicate an apparent protective effect of moderate alcohol intake on CHD mortality that cannot be attributed to the inclusion of subjects with CHD or related diseases into the nondrinker category.
ISSN:1044-3983
1531-5487
DOI:10.1097/00001648-199009000-00003