WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A new study shows that the death rate from alcohol-related liver disease in the U.S. has nearly doubled over the last 20 years and the COVID-19 pandemic made things worse.
The biggest increases were seen in women, young adults, and indigenous people, according to research published in JAMA Network Open.
In 2024, Dr. Brian Lee and his team at Keck Medicine conducted a follow-up study to understand how much alcohol people were drinking. They used data from the National Health Interview Survey, which collects health and lifestyle information from over 24,000 U.S. adults each year.
In this study, the scientists considered heavy drinking as 5 or more drinks in a day or over 15 drinks in a week for men, and 4 or more drinks in a day or more than 8 drinks in a week for women.
'The thought is the pandemic was more sustained, and when you have a trigger for increasing alcohol use, we know even if you remove the trigger, it doesn't necessarily remove the substance use disorder. Meaning the habit can become more than just a habit and become a way of life - an addiction,' Lee noted.
During the study, the researchers compared alcohol use in 2018 (before the pandemic), 2020 (during the pandemic), and 2022 (when life was getting back to normal after the pandemic).
They found that heavy drinking increased by 20 percent between 2018 and 2020. Meanwhile, overall alcohol use also rose by 4 percent.
'The liver can regenerate, but only up to a point,' Lee warned. 'Even if you have small amounts of healthy liver, you may feel fine, but when it's really damaged, people may develop fluid in the belly, leg swelling, confusion, bleeding from large vessels or jaundice. Liver failure can develop very quickly.'
These increases continued into 2022 across nearly all groups - men, women, different age groups, races, and regions, except for Native American and Asian American populations.
'If you are drinking above the threshold, it's really important to talk to your doctor about that so you can be screened for health problems,' Lee advised. 'If caught early, you might be able to prevent and treat the progression of liver disease.'
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