Manthey J, et al. - Because alcohol use is a leading risk factor for global disease burden and alcohol exposure data are critical for assessing progress towards achieving global non-communicable disease goals, researchers presented estimates of the main alcohol exposure indicators for 189 countries from 1990 to 2017, with predictions up to 2030. According to results, 20% of adults were heavy episodic drinkers in 2017, and this prevalence is expected to rise to 23% in 2030. Based on these data, it is unlikely that global objectives will be achieved to reduce harmful alcohol use, and known effective and cost-effective policy measures should be implemented to reduce alcohol exposure.

Methods

• Adult alcohol per-capita consumption (the consumption in L of pure alcohol per adult [≥ 15 years]) was based on country-validated data up to 2016 in a given year.
• Multivariate log-normal mixture Poisson distribution models obtained estimates up to 2030.
• Prevalence of lifetime abstinence and current drinking was obtained from Dirichlet regressions utilizing survey data from 149 countries.
• With fractional response regressions using survey data from 118 countries, the prevalence of heavy episodic drinking (30-day prevalence of ≥ 1 occasion of 60 g of pure alcohol intake among current drinkers) was estimated.

Results

• Global adult per-capita consumption increased from 5.9 L to 6.5 L between 1990 and 2017, and was predicted to reach 7.6 L by 2030.
• Globally, lifetime abstinence prevalence reduced from 46% in 1990 to 43% in 2017, although this was not a significant decline, while current drinking prevalence increased from 45% in 1990 to 47% in 2017.
• The investigators predicted both trends to continue, with abstinence falling to 40% by 2030, with the proportion of current drinkers rising to 50% by 2030.