Drinking pattern and mortality: The Italian risk factor and life expectancy pooling project

PURPOSE: To analyze the relationship between an aspect of drinking pattern (i.e., drinking with or without meals) and risk of all-cause and specific-c ause mortality. METHODS: The Risk Factors and Life Expectancy Study, is a pooling of a seri es of epidemiological studies conducted in Italy. Eight-thousand six-hundre d and forty-seven men and 6521 women, age 30-59 at baseline, and free of ca rdiovascular disease, were followed for mortality from all causes, cardiova scular and noncardiovascular, during an average follow-up of 7 years. RESULTS: Drinkers of wine outside meals exhibited higher death rates from a ll causes, noncardiovascular diseases, and cancer, as compared to drinkers of wine with meats. This association was independent from the cardiovascula r disease (CVD) risk factors measured at baseline and the amount of alcohol consumed and seemed to be stronger in women as compared to men. CONCLUSIONS: The present results indicate that drinking patterns may have i mportant health implications, and attention should be given to this aspect of alcohol use and its relationship to health outcomes. The relationship be tween alcohol consumption and disease has been the focus of intensive scien tific investigation (1-9). Most studies to dale, however, have limitations. A major drawback is that limited information has been collected regarding the complex issue of alcohol consumption In many studies, ascertainment of alcohol consumption frequently focused only on quantity of alcohol consumed without considering the many different components of alcohol consumption, particularly drinking pattern (10-12). it has been hypothesized, and prelim inary data support the notion, that drinking pattern could have important i nfluences on determining the health effects of alcohol (13,I4). The present study examines the relationship between one aspect of drinking pattern (dr inking wine outside meals) and mortality in a large cohort of men and women . Ann Epidemiol 2001;11:312-319. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.