Hard liquor, not beer or wine, may explain trends in cirrhosis...( op in spirits consumption was soon foll...),Health

"Our results serve as a clue, not an explanation, for the mysterious peak and decline of cirrhosis mortality," said Roizen.

The observed long-term correlation was effectively anticipated in a 1967 paper published in the American Journal of Public Health by noted epidemiologist Milton Terris. Based on a three-country analysis of cirrhosis and alcohol consumption trends, Terris concluded that per capita beer consumption had no association with cirrhosis mortality trends. Since wine contributes only one-eighth of US alcohol consumption, Terris' exclusion of beer implied that hard liquor would be strongly associated with cirrhosis mortality trends. The new UCSF paper confirms Terris' 30-year-old implied prediction.

The researchers caution that correlations between population data are not equivalent to data about individual drinking behavior and cirrhosis risk. "Our findings do not show that drinking hard liquor leads to cirrhosis and drinking beer and wine does not," said Roizen. "The reported relationship does, however, open the door to exploring beverage-specific links between alcohol consumption and cirrhosis."

In addition to Roizen, co-authors of the paper are William C. Kerr, PhD, UCSF assistant research economist in the department of social and behavior sciences; and Kaye Fillmore, PhD, UCSF adjunct professor of social and behavioral sciences.

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Contact: Rebecca Sladek Nowlis
rsnowlis@pubaff.ucsf.edu
415-476-2557
University of California - San Francisco
13-Sep-1999