This paper summarises the relationships between different patterns of alcohol consumption and various on non-communicable disease (NCD) outcomes and estimates the overall impact of alcohol consumption on global mortality and burden of disease.
A narrative review, based on published meta-analyses of alcohol consumption-disease relations, together with an examination of the Comparative Risk Assessment estimates applied to the latest available revision of Global Burden of Disease study.
Alcohol is causally linked (to varying degrees) to eight different cancers, with the risk increasing with the volume consumed. Similarly alcohol use is detrimentally related to many cardiovascular outcomes, including hypertension, haemorrhagic stroke and atrial fibrillation. For other cardiovascular outcomes the relationship is more complex. Alcohol is furthermore linked to various forms of liver disease (particularly with fatty liver, alcoholic hepatitis and cirrhosis) and pancreatitis. For diabetes the relationship is also complex. Conservatively of the global NCD-related burden of deaths, net years of life lost (YLL) and net disability adjusted life years (DALYs), 3.4%, 5.0% and 2.4% respectively can be attributed to alcohol consumption, with the burden being particularly high for cancer and liver cirrhosis. This burden is especially pronounced in countries of the former Soviet Union.
There is a strong link between alcohol and NCDs, particularly cancer, cardiovascular disease, liver disease, pancreatitis and diabetes and these findings support calls by WHO to implement evidence-based strategies to reduce harmful use of alcohol.
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