Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Feb;43(2):262-269.
doi: 10.1111/acer.13924. Epub 2018 Dec 10.

Lifetime Alcohol Use Patterns and Risk of Diabetes Onset in the National Alcohol Survey

William C Kerr  1 , Yu Ye  1 , Edwina Williams  1 , Camillia K Lui  1 , Thomas K Greenfield  1 , E Anne Lown  2
Affiliations

Lifetime Alcohol Use Patterns and Risk of Diabetes Onset in the National Alcohol Survey

William C Kerr et al. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2019 Feb.

Abstract

Background: Studies of the role of alcohol use in diabetes risk have rarely included lifetime alcohol use measures, including the frequency of heavy occasions, or evaluated risks among Black or Hispanic respondents in US samples.

Methods: Data from the 2014 to 2015 National Alcohol Survey of the U.S. population were used to estimate diabetes risk from drinking patterns at the time of onset in Cox proportional hazards models in a retrospective cohort design. Models for the population, males and females, and for White, Black, and Hispanic respondents of both genders were estimated using 2 versions of drinking pattern groupings at each age.

Results: While a number of significant results were found with the first version of the drinking measures, we focus on those confirmed with measures from responses strictly prior to the age of risk estimation. Compared to the lifetime abstainer group, the "drinking at least weekly with less than monthly 5+" group had a significantly lower hazard ratio (HR) for the total sample (HR = 0.64) and among Whites (HR = 0.42). Significantly reduced risks were found in the same models for those who drank 5+ at least monthly but not weekly. No significantly elevated risks were found for either current or prior heavy occasion drinking.

Conclusions: These results are consistent with some prior studies in finding reduced risks for regular light-to-moderate drinkers, but not consistent with findings from other studies showing increased risk from heavy occasion drinking, particularly among women. New and larger studies with well-defined drinking pattern measures are needed, particularly for U.S. Blacks and Hispanics, to address varying results in this literature.

Keywords: Diabetes; Drinking Pattern; Lifecourse; Survey.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

References

    1. Bell S, Britton A (2015) Reliability of a retrospective decade-based life-course alcohol consumption questionnaire administered in later life. Addiction 110(10):1563–1573. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Beulens JWJ, van der Schouw YT, Bergmann MM, Rohrmann S, Schulze MB, Buijsse B, Grobbee DE, Arriola L, Cauchi S, Tormo M-J, Allen NE, van der A DL, Balkau B, Boeing H, Clavel-Chapelon F, de Lauzon-Guillan B, Franks P, Froguel P, Gonzales C, Halkjær J, Huerta JM, Kaaks R, Key TJ, Khaw K-T, Krogh V, Molina-Montes E, Nilsson P, Overvad K, Palli D, Panico S, Ramón Quirós J, Rolandsson O, Romieu I, Romaguera D, Sacerdote C, Sánchez M-J, Spijkerman AMW, Teucher B, Tjonneland A, Tumino R, Sharp S, Forouhi NG, Langenberg C, Feskens EJM, Riboli E, Wareham NJ (2012) Alcohol consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes in European men and women: influence of beverage type and body size. The EPIC–InterAct study. J Intern Med 272(4):358–370. - PubMed
    1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2016) Defining adult overweight and obesity [Accessed: 2017-04-27 Archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/6q30xeddd], Altanta, GA.
    1. Eckel N, Mühlenbruch K, Meidtner K, Boeing H, Stefan N, Schulze MB (2015) Characterization of metabolically unhealthy normal-weight individuals: risk factors and their associations with type 2 diabetes. Metabolism 64(8):862–871. - PubMed
    1. Fagherazzi G, Vilier A, Lajous M, Boutron-Ruault MChristine, Balkau B, Clavel-Chapelon F, Bonnet F (2014) Wine consumption throughout life is inversely associated with type 2 diabetes risk, but only in overweight individuals: results from a large female French cohort study. Eur J Epidemiol 29(11):831–839. - PubMed

Publication types