Alcohol-attributable and alcohol-preventable mortality in Denmark: an analysis of which intake levels contribute most to alcohol’s harmful and beneficial effects

The aim of the study was to quantify alcohol-attributable and -preventable mortality, totally and stratified on alcohol consumption in Denmark 2010, and to estimate alcohol-related mortality assuming different scenarios of changes in alcohol distribution in the population. We estimated alcohol-attributable and -preventable fractions based on relative risks of conditions causally associated with alcohol from meta-analyses and information on alcohol consumption in Denmark obtained from 14,458 participants in the Danish National Health Survey 2010 and corrected for adult per capita consumption. Cause-specific mortality data were obtained from the Danish Register of Causes of Death. In total, 1,373 deaths among women (5.0 % of all deaths) and 2,522 deaths among men (9.5 % of all deaths) were attributable to alcohol, while an estimated number of 765 (2.8 %) and 583 (2.2 %) deaths were prevented by alcohol. Of the alcohol-attributable deaths, 73 and 81 % occurred within the high alcohol consumption group (>14/21 drinks/week for women/men). A reduction of 50 % in the alcohol consumption was associated with a decrease of 1,406 partly alcohol-attributable deaths (46 %) and 37 alcohol-preventable deaths (3 %). Total compliance with sensible drinking guidelines with a low risk limit (<7/14 drinks/week) and a high risk limit (<14/21 drinks/week) was associated with a reduction of 2,380 and 1,977 alcohol-attributable deaths, respectively. In summary, 5.0 % of deaths among women and 9.5 % of deaths among men were attributable to alcohol in Denmark 2010. The minority of Danish women and men had high alcohol consumption (16 and 26 %). However, the majority of all alcohol-attributable deaths among women and men were caused by high consumption (73 and 81 %).