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. 2019 Dec 13;7(4):99.
doi: 10.3390/biomedicines7040099.

Global Burden of Alcohol Use Disorders and Alcohol Liver Disease

Jürgen Rehm  1   2   3   4   5   6   7 , Kevin D Shield  1   3   5
Affiliations

Global Burden of Alcohol Use Disorders and Alcohol Liver Disease

Jürgen Rehm et al. Biomedicines. .

Abstract

Alcohol use is a major risk factor for burden of mortality and morbidity. Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) and alcohol use disorders (AUDs) are important disease outcomes caused by alcohol use. We will describe the global mortality and burden of disease in disability-adjusted life years for ALD and AUDs, based on data from the comparative risk assessment of the World Health Organization for 2016. AUDs have a limited impact on mortality in this assessment, since alcohol poisonings are almost the only disease category directly attributable to AUDs; most other alcohol-related deaths are indirect, and the cause which directly led to the death, such as liver cirrhosis, is the one recorded on the death certificate. Burden of disease for AUDs is thus mainly due to disability resulting from alcohol use. In contrast to AUDs, ALD is one of the major lethal outcomes of alcohol use, and burden of disease is mainly due to (premature) years of life lost. Many of the negative outcomes attributable to both AUDs and ALD are due to their interactions with other factors, most notably economic wealth. To avoid alcohol-attributable morbidity and mortality, measures should be taken to reduce the AUDs and ALD burden globally, especially among the poor.

Keywords: alcohol; alcohol use disorders; alcoholic liver disease; burden of disease; disability-adjusted life years; interaction; mortality; poverty.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Prevalence (in %) of alcohol use disorders in adults (15 years and older) in 2016. Based on [4].
Figure 2
Figure 2
Age-standardized burden of disease (DALYs) of alcohol use disorders per 100,000 people in 2016. Based on [5].
Figure 3
Figure 3
Age-standardized burden of disease (DALYs) attributable to alcohol use per 100,000 people in 2016). Based on [5].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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