Middle-aged women experienced increases in alcohol-related health complications during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research published in JAMA Health Forum.
Authors of the study say the research raises alarm bells indicating the need for immediate public health and clinical interventions to reverse the trends, including urgent communication about the risks of alcohol use.
“Even though alcohol-related deaths are higher among men than women, the rate of change has increased faster among women compared to men over the last decade,” said lead author Bryant Shuey, assistant professor of medicine, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. “We anticipated finding some increase in hospitalizations for alcohol-related complications among women. We didn’t realize it would be this stark.”
Data for the study came from a deidentified commercial insurance database and included more than 14 million patients aged 15 and older. The researchers looked at monthly rates of alcohol-related complications requiring urgent medical care, which included alcohol-related liver diseases, like cirrhosis or hepatitis, as well as alcohol withdrawal and alcohol-related heart disease, among others.
Researchers then analyzed and compared the monthly rate of hospital admissions for alcohol-related complications during the pandemic to what would have been expected based on the prepandemic trend. Middle-aged women’s rate of hospital admissions for alcohol-related complications was higher than expected in 10 of the 18 months following the start of the pandemic in the United States, compared to four of the 18 months when looking at all ages and genders. Middle-aged women experienced higher-than-expected rates of hospital admissions for alcohol-related liver diseases in 16 of the 18 pandemic months. To the researchers, this was alarming given that alcohol-related liver disease is the leading underlying cause of alcohol-related deaths in the United States.
Read more about the findings in the news release.
Photo credit: UPMC