Research suggests that moderate or even low amounts of alcohol consumption may cause greater harm to poorer people or those in poorer health.
The study comes just weeks after another research paper showed that previous studies had exaggerated the benefits of alcohol and downplayed its dangers.
Dr Rosario Ortolá, a co-author of the study from the Autonomous University of Madrid, said that while low alcohol consumption may have some benefits for older people at higher risk of cardiovascular disease, these benefits are small and could be achieved in other ways, such as improving diet or increasing exercise.
“It is also clear that alcohol consumption from the first drop is associated with a higher risk of cancer, so we believe that medical advice should not recommend consuming alcohol to improve health,” she said.
Writing in the journal Jama Network Open, Ortolá and colleagues report how they used data submitted to the UK Biobank health database by participants who enrolled between 2006 and 2010.
The researchers examined data from 135,103 participants aged 60 and older and assigned each participant to one of four categories based on their average daily alcohol consumption: occasional, low risk, moderate risk and high risk.
While the “occasionally” category includes less than a quarter of a small glass of wine per day, “high risk” equates to at least two pints of cider per day for men and one pint of cider per day for women.
The researchers then examined which patients died by the end of September 2021 and found a total of 15,833 deaths.
After controlling for factors such as participants’ age and gender, the team found that risky drinking was associated with a 33 percent higher risk of dying from any cause over the course of the study compared with occasional drinking, as well as a higher risk of dying from cancer or cardiovascular disease.
With low-risk drinking, the risk of death from any cause was 10% higher than with occasional drinking, and the risk of death from cancer was 15% higher. Even with low-risk drinking, the risk of death from cancer was 11% higher than with occasional drinking.
However, upon closer inspection, the team found that moderate or low-risk alcohol consumption worsened outcomes in people who lived in poorer areas or who had poorer health to begin with.
“We believe that older adults with poorer health status are more vulnerable to the harmful effects of alcohol due to their higher morbidity, their more frequent use of medications that interact with alcohol, and their lower alcohol tolerance,” Ortolá said.
“In addition, there is evidence that socioeconomically disadvantaged populations are more likely to suffer alcohol-related harm with the same or even lower levels of alcohol consumption. This is likely due to the co-existence of other health problems, including unhealthier lifestyles and lower social support or access to health care,” she said.
Perhaps surprisingly, the team found that a strong preference for wine or drinking only with meals seemed to reduce the risk of death regardless of the amount of alcohol consumed – although this only applied to people in poor health or high alcohol deprivation.
While Ortolá said these results need further investigation, he also suggested they could be due to factors such as the non-alcoholic components of wine or the slower absorption of alcohol when consumed with food.
However, the study has limitations. For example, the data on drinking habits were based on self-reports, so cause and effect cannot be demonstrated.
Colin Angus, a medical research fellow at the University of Sheffield who was not involved in the study, said the study provided further evidence that even low levels of alcohol consumption increased the risk of cancer. But he said more research was needed to prove that the link between low levels of alcohol consumption and higher mortality was stronger in people in poorer health or from lower socioeconomic groups.
Angus also stressed that the finding that drinking wine could have benefits should be viewed with extreme suspicion. “There is absolutely no biologically plausible evidence that wine consumption is better for you than other forms of alcohol,” he said. “It’s almost certain that what they’ve actually found is that wealthier people drink more wine and are also less likely to die relatively young.”
