University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: February 6, 2003

By LOIS BAKER
Contributing Editor

Binge drinking by African Americans who drink appears to negate the protective health effects seen in most groups who, as in this population, consume moderate amounts of alcohol in general, UB researchers have found.

Results of the study, published in the current issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, were surprising, said Christopher T. Sempos, professor of social and preventive medicine and lead author on the study.

"Our findings indicate that African Americans drank on average significantly higher quantities per drinking day than other groups studied, even though their average volume of drinking was not higher."

While this type of drinking pattern might be expected to lessen the protective effect of light-to-moderate alcohol consumption, finding no protective effect at all was unexpected, Sempos said. "The important message to take from these findings is that a habit of binge drinking or heavy drinking on a single day is risky to your health."

Most studies of the relationship between alcohol consumption and death from all causes show that moderate drinkers—those who consume approximately seven drinks per week—have a lower risk of death than abstainers, and heavy drinkers have a higher risk than either group. This "J-shaped" pattern has been found in various races and ethnic groups, Sempos noted.

Such studies base their findings on "average" alcohol consumption, which assumes a consistent pattern, Sempos said. "If you average seven drinks per week, you could have one drink per day, but you also could have seven drinks in one day. Most information on average intake obscures this fact."

Knowing that drinking patterns among African Americans have been shown to be more extreme than those of white drinkers, with more abstinence but also more occasions of heavy drinking, Sempos and colleagues set out to define the relationship between drinking and death from all causes in a large group of African Americans.

The study group was composed of 768 men and 1,286 women between the ages of 25 and 75 who took part in the first National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), conducted between 1971-75. Original data were compared with follow-up data on mortality collected through 1992.

Researchers compared data on volume and frequency of alcohol consumption gathered at baseline with statistics on study-group members who had died during the intervening years. Previous research has indicated that the same volume of alcohol consumption spread over more occasions is linked to less detrimental outcomes, compared with the same volume spread over fewer occasions, Sempos said.

While the average weekly consumption of alcohol was similar in African Americans and whites, the average amount consumed over a 24-hour period was significantly different, with both African-American men and women drinking more during a single occasion compared to their white counterparts, results showed.

"Binge and heavy drinking is associated with an increase in heart disease mortality, the principal cause of death in this age group," Sempos said. "This problem isn't limited to African Americans. It shows up in cultures in which binge drinking is common. In fact, we see the same thing in Russian men, who are frequent binge drinkers."

Also contributing to the research were Tiejian Wu, Carlos Crespo and Maurizio Trevisan, all from the UB Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, and Jürgen Rehm from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.

The study was funded by UB, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and the Addiction Research Institute, Zurich, Switzerland.