28 June 2023 , 16:22
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Drinking just one alcoholic beverage a week has been linked to 61 different diseases in a major new study - including several that were not previously connected to boozing.
Oxford Population Health and Peking University published a new study last month focused on the long-term effects of consuming alcohol.
It found that it increased the risks of developing over 60 different diseases, including a few that were not previously linked to alcohol usage.
Assessing information from China's Biobank systems, researchers found that "among men, alcohol intake was positively associated with 61 diseases, including 33 not defined by the World Health Organization as alcohol-related."
Gout, cataract, certain fractures, and gastric ulcers are among the new diseases that are now being linked to regular alcohol consumption (at least one drink a week).
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The study also cleared up another important misconception popularised in the media - that moderate drinking (one-two drinks per day) did not have any protective effects against heart disease.
Regular drinking can lead to a variety of diseases, and researchers just uncovered a few more that were not previously linked to alcohol consumption (Getty Images)Iona Millwood, Associate Professor at Oxford Population Health and a senior author of the study, said "It is becoming clear that the harmful use of alcohol is one of the most important risk factors for poor health, both in China and globally."
In the study, the diseases that have already been classified as alcohol-related by the WHO, such as liver cirrhosis, stroke, and several gastrointestinal cancers were prevalent in much of the studied population.
During the duration of the study, there were over 1.1 million hospitalisations, with doctors noticing that men who drank regularly had longer and more difficult hospital stays than their counterparts.
The study acknowledged that using Chinese men as their base for information may not necessarily apply to Western populations as genetics plays a role in metabolising alcohol, and cultural choices of drink may also change the health effects slightly (grain liquors are consumed far more in the East, whereas other types of alcohol may not increase the chances of stroke as much).
While higher alcohol intake was significantly associated with a higher risk of stroke, the study showed no increased risk of ischaemic heart disease (IHD).
Pek Kei Im, a Research Fellow at Oxford Population Health and a lead author of the paper, said: "Alcohol consumption is adversely related to a much wider range of diseases than has previously been established, and our findings show these associations are likely to be causal."
In their initial assessment of the subjects, researchers found women in China were far less likely to be regular alcohol users, and so they provided a useful control group for the men - which had much higher rates of consumption.
Professor of Epidemiology at Oxford Population Health and a senior author, Professor Zhengming Chen, said: "This study provides important causal evidence of the scale of alcohol-related harms, which is critical to inform prevention strategies in different countries."
Both the US and the UK have high rates of alcoholism and alcohol-related disorders, with the UK in the lead with a 12 per cent alcohol disorder rate, vs the US which is at eight per cent, according to 2020 data. Both of these rates are extremely high and add to the public healthcare costs, as well as contribute to a lower average lifespan.
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