Lifecourse drinking patterns, hypertension, and heart problems among U.S. adults

Lifecourse drinking patterns, hypertension, and heart problems among U.S. adults
According to the authors of a paper published in the American Journal of Preventative Health, understanding the role of alcohol in hypertension and heart problems requires a lifecourse perspective, accounting for drinking patterns before onset of health problems that distinguishes between lifetime abstinence and former drinking, prior versus current drinking, and overall alcohol consumption in conjunction with heavy episodic drinking.
Using prospective data among U.S. adults aged 21-55 years, a study accounted for these lifecourse factors in order to investigate the effect of alcohol on hypertension and heart problems.
Data from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, on 8,289 young people aged 14-21 years in 1979 and followed through 2012, were analysed in 2017-18 to estimate hypertension and heart problems onset from lifecourse drinking patterns. Discrete-time survival models stratified by sex and race/ethnicity were employed, controlling for demographics and time-varying factors of employment, smoking, and obesity.
Elevated risks for hypertension were found for women drinking >14 drinks/week regardless of any heavy drinking (AOR=1.57) and for men engaged in risky drinking (15-28 drinks/week) together with monthly heavy drinking (AOR=1.64). Having a history of weekly heavy drinking elevated the risk for women but not for men. No significant relationship was evident for alcohol and heart problems onset.
The study confirms previous findings of increased hypertension risk from higher volume and heavier drinking patterns among women and men but did not find any support for increased heart problems risk, which the authors suggest may be due to the younger age profile of the sample. They suggest that further research that incorporates lifecourse drinking patterns is needed to better understand the alcohol-health relationship.
Source: Lifecourse Drinking Patterns, Hypertension, and Heart Problems Among U.S. Adults.Lui CK, Kerr WC, Li L, Mulia N, Ye Y, Williams E, Greenfield TK, Lown EA. Am J Prev Med. 2019 Dec 28. pii: S0749-3797(19)30483-0.