FRIDAY, June 15 (HealthDay News) -- Almost half of deaths in young to middle-aged urban men in Russia can be attributed to problem drinking, according to a single-city study published in the June 16 issue of The Lancet.
David A. Leon, Ph.D., of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London, U.K., and colleagues studied the deaths of 25- to 54-year-old men in Izhevsk during a two-year period between 2003 and 2005. They interviewed household members and classified all types of drinking, including the consumption of "non-beverage alcohol," which is ethanol-based liquid not meant for consumption, such as cologne. In all, 1,468 cases were matched to 1,496 controls.
Problem drinkers and non-beverage alcohol drinkers had a sixfold higher risk of death compared to controls who abstained or did not drink to excess. The mortality risk for non-beverage drinkers was ninefold higher, after adjusting for smoking and education. Overall, 43 percent of deaths were associated with non-beverage alcohol drinking, problem drinking, or both.
"Almost half of all deaths in working age men in a typical Russian city may be accounted for by hazardous drinking," the authors write. "Our analyses provide indirect support for the contention that the sharp fluctuations seen in Russian mortality in the early 1990s could be related to hazardous drinking."
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