Alcohol Use Disorder, Alcohol-Associated Liver Disease Up in Older U.S. Adults

MONDAY, Dec. 2, 2024 (HealthDay News) — The prevalence of and mortality from alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) increased among older U.S. adults, according to a study presented at The Liver Meeting, the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, held from Nov. 15 to 19 in San Diego.

Pojsakorn Danpanichkul, M.D., from the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, and colleagues examined temporal shifts in both the prevalence and mortality rates associated with ALD and AUD among older U.S. adults using data from the Global Burden of Disease Study (2010 to 2019).

The researchers found that in 2019, there were approximately 556,340 cases of AUD, 112,560 cases of alcohol-associated cirrhosis, and 3,720 cases of primary liver cancer from alcohol among older U.S. adults. While globally there were declines in age-standardized rates of prevalence and mortality, these measures increased in the United States. During the study period, there were increases in mortality from AUD (the annual percent change [APC], +1.63 percent), cirrhosis (APC, +0.56 percent), and primary liver cancer from alcohol (APC, +3.09 percent). Nearly half of U.S. states showed a rise in mortality from alcohol-associated cirrhosis.

“Public health strategies on ALD and AUD targeting the elderly are urgently needed,” the authors write.

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