ArticleAlcoholism, clinical and experimental research2019
Alcohol Consumption in Later Life and Mortality in the United States: Results from 9 Waves of the Health and Retirement Study.
Article in Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Association Between Daily Alcohol Intake and Risk of All-Cause Mortality: A Systematic Review and Meta-analyses.JAMA network open · 2023Pooled it
- Are there non-linear relationships between alcohol consumption and long-term health?: a systematic review of observational studies employing approaches to improve causal inference.BMC medical research methodology · 2022Pooled it
- Longitudinal Associations of Job Demand-Control Characteristics With Objective and Subjective Cognitive Outcomes in Older Workers: The Health and Retirement Study.American journal of industrial medicine · 2025Article
- Long-term trends in beverage-specific drinking in the National Alcohol Surveys: Differences by sex, age, and race and ethnicity.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2024Article
- Drinking contexts, coping motive, simultaneous cannabis use, and high-intensity drinking among adults in the United States.Alcohol and alcoholism (Oxford, Oxfordshire) · 2024Article
- Alcohol Use and Mortality Among Older Couples in the United States: Evidence of Individual and Partner Effects.The Gerontologist · 2024Article
- The effect of alcohol consumption on all-cause mortality in 70-year-olds in the context of other lifestyle risk factors: results from the Gothenburg H70 birth cohort study.BMC geriatrics · 2023Article
- Aging in nucleus accumbens and its impact on alcohol use disorders.Alcohol (Fayetteville, N.Y.) · 2023Review
- Article
- Is drinking wine in moderation good for health or not?European heart journal supplements : journal of the European Society of Cardiology · 2022Article
- Alcohol, Drinking Pattern, and Chronic Disease.Nutrients · 2022Review
- Trends of Multimorbidity Patterns over 16 Years in Older Taiwanese People and Their Relationship to Mortality.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Alcohol abstinence and mortality in a general population sample of adults in Germany: A cohort study.PLoS medicine · 2021Article
- Association of Alcohol and Tobacco Consumption with Depression Severity in the Oldest Old. Results from the Age Different Old Age Cohort Platform.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Cross-country differences in age trends in alcohol consumption among older adults: a cross-sectional study of individuals aged 50 years and older in 22 countries.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2021Observational
- The association of alcohol use with all-cause and cardiovascular disease-related hospitalizations or death in older, high-risk Veterans.Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research · 2021Article
- NIH Portfolio of Unintentional Injury Research Among Racial and Ethnic Minority Children: Current Landscape and Future Opportunities.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2021Article
- Article
- Patterns of Substance Use and Associations with Mental, Physical, and Social Functioning: A Latent Class Analysis of a National Sample of U.S. Adults Ages 30-80.Substance use & misuse · 2021Article
- Alcohol Consumption and Risk of Hospitalizations and Mortality in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study.Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAlcohol consumption in later life has increased in the past decade, and the relationship between alcohol consumption and mortality is controversial. Recent studies suggest little, if any, health benefit to alcohol. Yet most rely on single-time point consumption assessments and minimal confounder adjustments.
methodsWe report on 16 years of follow-up from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) cohorts born 1931 to 1941 (N = 7,904, baseline mean age = 61, SD = 3.18). Respondents were queried about drinking frequency/quantity. Mortality was established via exit interviews and confirmed with the national death index. Time-varying confounders included but were not limited to household assets, smoking, body mass index, health/functioning, depression, chronic disease; time-invariant confounders included baseline age, education, sex, and race.
resultsAfter adjustment, current abstainers had the highest risk of subsequent mortality, consistent with sick quitters, and moderate (men: HR = 0.74, 95% CI: 0.60 to 0.91; women: HR = 0.82, 95% CI: 0.63 to 1.07) drinking was associated with a lower mortality rate compared with occasional drinking, though smokers and men evidenced less of an inverse association. Quantitative bias analyses indicated that omitted confounders would need to be associated with ~4-fold increases in mortality rates for men and ~9-fold increases for women to change the results.
conclusionsThere are consistent associations between moderate/occasional drinking and lower mortality, though residual confounding remains a threat to validity. Continued efforts to conduct large-scale observational studies of alcohol consumption and mortality are needed to characterize the changing patterns of consumption in older age.
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