- Details
- Hits: 2413
SBS 27/2/18
Nearly 6000 Australians are dying from alcohol-related diseases each year. (AAP)
Nearly 6000 Australians died as a result of a disease linked to alcohol in 2015, the National Drug Research Institute has found.
Alcohol-related diseases are being blamed for causing the deaths of nearly 6000 Australians each year.
A study by the National Drug Research Institute at Western Australia's Curtin University has found an estimated 5,785 people aged over 15 died from alcohol-attributable causes in 2015.
Just over a third died from alcohol-attributed cancer, with injuries, cardiovascular disease and digestive diseases linked to 17 per cent of deaths.
"This research shows that in Australia, one person dies every 90 minutes on average, and someone ends up in our hospitals every three-and-a-half minutes, because of preventable conditions caused by alcohol," NDRI alcohol policy team leader Professor Tanya Chikritzh said.
Breast cancer and liver disease were the main causes of death for women, while most men died from liver disease and bowel cancer.
As well as the 2000 people who died from alcohol-attributable cancer, another 13,000 were hospitalised with cancers linked to low or moderate drinking levels.
Terry Slevin, education and research director at Cancer Council WA, said many people would be shocked to learn that more than one third of alcohol-related deaths were linked to cancer.
"We rarely see people with a cancer diagnosis link their drinking to the disease," he said.
"We have a long way to go to embed the notion that drinking alcohol genuinely increases risk of cancer and death."
- Details
- Hits: 2827
BOSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE--Heavy alcohol consumption (three drinks or more/day for women and four drinks or more/day for men) is linked to alterations in immune function among people with HIV.
Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) looked at biological markers of innate immune function, a kind of immune response that acts quickly and non-specifically to new infections and pathogens. They investigated biological markers of three specific immune processes: systemic inflammation, monocyte activation and altered coagulation. Higher levels of biological markers for these processes have previously been associated with higher risk of death. In the current study, the researchers assessed self-reported alcohol use over time (three times over two years) and also measured alcohol use using a blood-based marker of alcohol consumption called PEth (phosphatidylethanol) that detects alcohol consumption up to about 21 days after drinking. Additionally they measured other behaviors and health conditions that could obscure the true relationship between alcohol consumption and these biomarkers.
"We found that people who reported drinking more alcohol or had high PEth had higher levels of these biomarkers of immune function. The fact that heavy alcohol consumption was linked to elevated levels of these biomarkers, which are linked to mortality, suggests that alcohol may be contributing to mortality risk through immune dysfunction among people with HIV," said corresponding author Kaku So-Armah, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at BUSM.