Older adults with health issues who drink at low risk levels are more likely to die of cancer when compared with people who drink only occasionally, according to a new study.
ADVERTISEMENTOlder adults who drink alcohol on a regular basis are at higher risk of dying from cancer, according to a large new study in the United Kingdom that found people with health issues or lower socioeconomic status are particularly vulnerable.
The study, published in medical journal JAMA Network Open, found that among people with health problems, even those who drank at low-risk levels were more likely to die of cancer than those who only drank occasionally, while moderate-level drinkers were more likely to die from cancer and overall.
High-risk drinkers were more likely than occasional drinkers to die from cardiovascular disease, in addition to cancer and other causes.
“The detrimental effects on cancer [deaths] are observed from the first drop,” Dr Rosario Ortolá, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor in the department of preventive medicine and public health at the Autonomous University of Madrid, told Euronews Health.
The analysis included about 135,000 people who were aged 60 and up and enrolled in the 2006-2010 cohort of the UK Biobank — a large-scale biomedical database. Researchers assigned each person scores based on their health risks and neighbourhood socioeconomic factors, and followed their health outcomes over time, for a median of 12.4 years.
Researchers used occasional drinkers as their comparison group, rather than alcohol abstainers, because abstainers typically include people who have given up drinking and have health issues that may make them less similar to regular drinkers, all other factors considered.
Notably, mortality risks were also higher among people who had health problems or lived in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas, regardless of the level of alcohol they drank, the study found. It may be due to less healthy lifestyles and less access to social support and health care services, according to the study.
The findings “identify inequalities in the detrimental health outcomes associated with alcohol”, the study’s authors said, underscoring the role of public health efforts to “reduce the high burden of disease of alcohol use”.
‘No level of alcohol consumption is safe’
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), alcohol leads to nearly 1 million deaths per year across Europe, and the region has the highest alcohol consumption levels in the world. Alcohol is a key risk factor for cancer, heart and digestive diseases, and mental health problems.
The study “reaffirms that no level of alcohol consumption is safe,” Alessandro Gallina, policy manager for non-communicable disease prevention at the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA), told Euronews Health.
Several European countries have taken steps to curb alcohol’s health impact. Beginning in 2026, for example, Ireland will require that alcoholic drinks carry risk labels about cancer and liver disease. Norway, which has long banned alcohol advertising and levies heavy taxes on alcohol, will also soon require health labels on alcoholic drinks.
Late last year, the European Parliament adopted a non-binding resolution on non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cancer that highlighted the risks tied to the “harmful use of alcohol”.
Yet the WHO, the EPHA and others have argued that the language waters down alcohol’s health risks, and have called for stronger EU-wide regulation.
“This terminology inadvertently suggests there is a ‘non-harmful’ use of alcohol, a notion unsupported by any reliable scientific evidence, including the findings from this study,” Gallina said.
