Two-third of preventable deaths due to heavy alcohol drinking occurred in working age Americans, a federal report states.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that people, who belong to the working age group of 20 to 64, mostly die due to excessive drinking.
"It's really important to drive home that excessive alcohol use is a leading cause of preventable death," lead author Katy Gonzales, alcohol epidemiologist at the Michigan Department of Community Health, said, reports HealthDay. "It really is right up there with tobacco and physical inactivity, especially among working-age adults."
For the research, the scientists analysed alcohol-related deaths in 11 states -California, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. They found that two-thirds of the preventable deaths in the country occurred between the ages of 20 and 64 and because of heavy alcohol consumption.
From 2006 to 2010, alcohol was responsible for an average of 1,650 deaths every year. The researchers also found that an average of 43,000 years were lost because of drinking. Around 80 percent of those years lost belonged to the working-age adult group.
The researchers arrived at the conclusion after using a computer model. The model examined a list of 54 alcohol-related complications to determine how drinking was tied to these deaths. Alcohol-related deaths included car crashes, firearm injuries, drownings, hypothermia, and health ailments, such as liver disease, cancer, stroke, hypertension, pancreatitis and fetal alcohol syndrome.
Of the 11 states, the findings showed that New Mexico had the highest alcohol-related deaths with the rate of about 51 deaths per 100,000 people. And Utah had the lowest alcohol-related deaths with 22.4 deaths per 100,000 residents. "We don't seem to understand that addiction is a brain disease," President and CEO of High Watch Recovery Center, Janina Kean said according to Medical Xpress. "We don't blame people with diabetes or heart disease or cancer, but we seem to think people suffering from addiction have chosen to do what they do."
The report was published in the CDC's 'Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.'
