Excessive consumption of alcohol by one in ten older adults, study finds

And according to a study published this week, about 1 in 10 older adults is considered an excessive drinker.

"Occasional excessive consumption of alcohol, even episodic or infrequent, can negatively affect other health conditions by exacerbating disease, interacting with prescribed medications and complicating the management of the disease." said Dr. Benjamin Han, lead author of the study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

Alcohol is also a risk factor for injury, said Han, but the consequences and recovery of a fall are much more serious for an 81-year-old man than for a 21-year-old man.

The study defined excessive occasional consumption of alcohol through the consumption of five or more glbades while sitting for men and four or more glbades while sitting for women. And a drink was a can or a bottle of beer, a glbad of wine or a wine bucket, a glbad of liquor or a mixed drink containing liquor.

Han's group badyzed data from the US National Annual Survey of Drug Use and Health between 2015 and 17. A total of 10,927 adults aged 65 and over reported drinking in the last 30 days.

The group did not include adults living in long-term care facilities or retirement homes, Han added.

The prevalence of excessive alcohol consumption among the elderly is still relatively low compared to other age groups, Han said. More than 38% of adults aged 18 to 25 attending university had recently been drunk excessively, representing the highest prevalence of all age groups. The study found that adults aged 26 to 34 had only slightly fewer heavy excessive drinkers.

Although clinicians and researchers are interested in alcohol and adolescent drinking habits, more attention should be paid to older adults, Han said.

Timothy S. Naimi, an alcohol epidemiologist and professor at the Boston University School of Medicine and Public Health, said the figure of 1 in 10 "is an impressive number and a cause of concern."

This number is "undoubtedly an underestimate," he added, as people tend to misdiagnose their actual consumption and heavy drinkers are less likely to be available or not. be included in surveys for other reasons.

Han said he hoped the study will highlight the importance for clinicians to screen for alcohol consumption in older patients and inform them of how their body is getting older. sensitive to alcohol with age.

The study did not examine the causes of excessive consumption of alcohol nor whether this number represents an increase or a decrease from previous years. However, Joseph J. Palamar, badociate professor at the University of New York's Faculty of Medicine and author of the study, pointed out that the cohort itself was a factor.

"I think that's partly due to the aging of baby boomers," said Palamar, about a group more likely to experience the drug and alcohol than the generation former.

Dr. George F. Koob, director of the National Institute of Combating Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, one of the organizations that funded the study , said the results confirmed the observed trends.

In 2017, the institute's epidemiologists published a study using data from 2001-02 and 2012-13 indicating that problematic alcohol consumption was increasing in older Americans.

And more women of all ages, who are more likely than men to have problems with alcohol, drink a lot, added Koob.

"In the old days, many more men than women drank," he said. "And now the gap is narrowing."

This week's study crystallized a very real problem, particularly the pharmacological aspect, Koob said.

"In reality, you can kill yourself much more easily with alcohol combined with any of these pills," he said.

"It's the elephant in the room talking about alcohol that society does not understand," he said, "alcohol is a drug and it's excessive, it can be rather harmful effects ".

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.