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 Dec 13;7(4):99.
doi: 10.3390/biomedicines7040099.

Global Burden of Alcohol Use Disorders and Alcohol Liver Disease

Jürgen Rehm  1   2   3   4   5   6   7 , Kevin D Shield  1   3   5
Affiliations

Global Burden of Alcohol Use Disorders and Alcohol Liver Disease

Jürgen Rehm et al. Biomedicines. .

Abstract

Alcohol use is a major risk factor for burden of mortality and morbidity. Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) and alcohol use disorders (AUDs) are important disease outcomes caused by alcohol use. We will describe the global mortality and burden of disease in disability-adjusted life years for ALD and AUDs, based on data from the comparative risk assessment of the World Health Organization for 2016. AUDs have a limited impact on mortality in this assessment, since alcohol poisonings are almost the only disease category directly attributable to AUDs; most other alcohol-related deaths are indirect, and the cause which directly led to the death, such as liver cirrhosis, is the one recorded on the death certificate. Burden of disease for AUDs is thus mainly due to disability resulting from alcohol use. In contrast to AUDs, ALD is one of the major lethal outcomes of alcohol use, and burden of disease is mainly due to (premature) years of life lost. Many of the negative outcomes attributable to both AUDs and ALD are due to their interactions with other factors, most notably economic wealth. To avoid alcohol-attributable morbidity and mortality, measures should be taken to reduce the AUDs and ALD burden globally, especially among the poor.

Keywords: alcohol; alcohol use disorders; alcoholic liver disease; burden of disease; disability-adjusted life years; interaction; mortality; poverty.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Prevalence (in %) of alcohol use disorders in adults (15 years and older) in 2016. Based on [4].
Figure 2
Figure 2
Age-standardized burden of disease (DALYs) of alcohol use disorders per 100,000 people in 2016. Based on [5].
Figure 3
Figure 3
Age-standardized burden of disease (DALYs) attributable to alcohol use per 100,000 people in 2016). Based on [5].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Rehm J., Gmel Sr G.E., Gmel G., Hasan O.S., Imtiaz S., Popova S., Probst C., Roerecke M., Room R., Samokhvalov A.V. The relationship between different dimensions of alcohol use and the burden of disease—An update. Addiction. 2017;112:968–1001. doi: 10.1111/add.13757. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Rehm J., Imtiaz S. A narrative review of alcohol consumption as a risk factor for global burden of disease. Subst. Abus. Treat. Prev. Policy. 2016;11:37. doi: 10.1186/s13011-016-0081-2. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Murray C.J.L. Quantifying the burden of disease: The technical basis for disability-adjusted life years. Bull. World Health Organ. 1994;72:429–445. - PMC - PubMed
    1. World Health Organization Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health 2018. [(accessed on 28 October 2019)]; Available online: https://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/en/
    1. Shield K.D., Manthey J., Rylett M., Probst C., Wettlaufer A., Rehm J. National, Regional, and Global Burdens of Disease from 2000 to 2016 Attributable to Alcohol Use. Lancet Public Health. (in press) - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources