Comparison of different approaches for estimating age-specific alcohol-attributable mortality: The cases of France and Finland

The impact of estimation methods for alcohol-attributable mortality on long-term trends for the general population and by educational level in Finland and Italy (Turin)

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

This paper assesses the impact of estimation methods for general and education-specific trends in alcohol-attributable mortality (AAM), and develops an alternative method that can be used when the data available for study is limited.

METHODS

We calculated yearly adult (30+) age-standardised and age-specific AAM rates by sex for the general population and by educational level (low, middle, high) in Finland and Turin (Italy) from 1972 to 2017. Furthermore the slope index of inequality and relative inequality index were computed by country and sex. We compared trends, levels, age distributions, and educational inequalities in AAM according to three existing estimation methods: (1) Underlying COD (UCOD), (2) Multiple COD (MCOD) method, and (3) the population attributable fractions (PAF)-method. An alternative method is developed based on the pros and cons of these methods and the outcomes of the comparison.

RESULTS

The UCOD and MCOD approaches revealed mainly increasing trends in AAM compared to the declining trends according to the PAF approach. These differences are more pronounced when examining AAM trends by educational groups, particularly for Finnish men. Until age 65, age patterns are similar for all methods, and levels nearly identical for MCOD and PAF in Finland. Our novel method assumes a similar trend and age pattern as observed in UCOD, but adjusts its level upwards so that it matches the level of the PAF approach for ages 30-64. Our new method yields levels in-between UCOD and PAF for Turin (Italy), and resembles the MCOD rates in Finland for females. Relative inequalities deviate for the PAF-method (lower levels) compared to other methods, whereas absolute inequalities are generally lower for UCOD than all three methods that combine wholly and partly AAM.

CONCLUSIONS

The choice of method to estimate AAM affects not only levels, but also general and education-specific trends and inequalities. Our newly developed method constitutes a better alternative for multiple-country studies by educational level than the currently used UCOD-method when the data available for study is limited to underlying causes of death.

Contributions of age groups and causes of death to the sex gap in lifespan variation in Europe

Much less is known about the sex gap in lifespan variation, which reflects inequalities in the length of life, than about the sex gap in life expectancy (average length of life). We examined the contributions of age groups and causes of death to the sex gap in lifespan variation for 28 European countries, grouped into five European regions. In 2010-15, males in Europe displayed a 6.8-year-lower life expectancy and a 2.3-year-higher standard deviation in lifespan than females, with clear regional differences. Sex differences in lifespan variation are attributable largely to higher external mortality among males aged 30-39, whereas sex differences in life expectancy are due predominantly to higher smoking-related and cardiovascular disease mortality among males aged 60-69. The distinct findings for the sex gap in lifespan variation and the sex gap in life expectancy provide additional insights into the survival differences between the sexes.

The contribution of alcohol-related deaths to the life-expectancy gap between people with and without depression - a cross-country comparison

BACKGROUND

Alcohol-related deaths may be among the most important reasons for the shorter life expectancy of people with depression, yet no study has quantified their contribution. We quantify the contribution of alcohol-related deaths to the life-expectancy gap in depression in four European countries with differing levels of alcohol-related mortality.

METHODS

We used cohort data linking population registers with health-care and death records from Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Turin, Italy, in 1993-2007 (210,412,097 person years, 3046,754 deaths). We identified psychiatric inpatients with depression from hospital discharge registers in Denmark, Finland, and Sweden and outpatients with antidepressant prescriptions from prescription registers in Finland and Turin. We assessed alcohol-related and non-alcohol-related deaths using both underlying and contributory causes of death, stratified by sex, age and depression status. We quantified the contribution of alcohol-related deaths by cause-of-death decomposition of the life-expectancy gap at age 25 between people with and without depression.

RESULTS

The gap in life expectancy was 13.1-18.6 years between people with and without inpatient treatment for depression and 6.7-9.1 years between those with and without antidepressant treatment. The contribution of alcohol-related deaths to the life-expectancy gap was larger in Denmark (33.6%) and Finland (18.1-30.5%) - i.e., countries with high overall alcohol-related mortality - than in Sweden (11.9%) and Turin (3.2%), and larger among men in all countries. The life-expectancy gap due to other than alcohol-related deaths varied little across countries.

CONCLUSIONS

Alcohol contributes heavily to the lower life expectancy in depression particularly among men and in countries with high overall alcohol-related mortality.

Methodological guidelines for the estimation of attributable mortality using a prevalence-based method: The STREAMS-P tool

BACKGROUND

There is evidence of strong links between exposure to different risk factors and life-threatening diseases. Assessing the burden of a risk factor on the population's mortality due to a given disease provides a clear picture of these links. The estimation of attributable mortality to a risk factor is the most widely used procedure for doing this. Although different methods are available to estimate attributable mortality, the prevalence-based methodology is the most frequent. The main objective of this paper is to develop guidelines and checklists to STrengthen the design and REporting of Attributable-Mortality Studies using a Prevalence-based method (STREAMS-P) and also to assess the quality of an already published study which uses this methodology.

METHODS

The design of the guideline and checklists has been done in two phases. A development phase, where we set recommendations based on the review of the literature; and a validation phase, where we validated our recommendations against other published studies that have estimated attributable mortality using a prevalence-based method.

RESULTS

We have developed and tested a guideline that includes the information required to perform a prevalence-based attributable mortality study to a given risk factor; a checklist of aspects that should be present when a report or a paper on attributable mortality is written or interpreted and a checklist of quality control criteria for reports or papers estimating attributable mortality.

CONCLUSION

To our knowledge, the STREAMS-P is the first set of criteria specifically created to assess the quality of such studies and it could be valuable for authors and readers interested in performing attributable mortality studies or interpreting their reliability.

Cardiovascular mortality gap between the US and other high life expectancy countries in 2000-2016

Objectives

Reductions in U.S. cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality have stagnated. While other high life expectancy countries (HLCs) have also recently experienced a stall, the stagnation in CVD mortality in the United States appeared earlier and has been more pronounced. The reasons for the stall are unknown. We analyze cross-national variations in mortality trends to quantify the U.S. exceptionality and provide insight into its underlying causes.

Methods

Data are from the World Health Organization (2000–2016). We quantified differences in levels and trends of CVD mortality between the United States and 17 other HLCs. We decomposed differences to identify the individual contributions of major CVD subclassifications (ischemic heart disease [IHD], stroke, other heart diseases). To identify potential behavioral explanations, we compared trends in CVD mortality with trends in other causes of death related to obesity, smoking, alcohol, and drugs.

Results

Our study has four central findings: (a) U.S. CVD mortality is consistently higher than the average of other HLCs; (b) the U.S.–HLC gap declined until around 2008 and increased thereafter; (c) the shift from convergence to divergence was mainly driven by slowing IHD and stroke mortality reductions and increasing mortality from other CVD causes; (d) among the potential risk factors, only obesity- and alcohol-related mortality showed age-specific temporal changes that are similar to those observed for cardiovascular mortality.

Discussion

The exceptional changes in U.S. CVD mortality are driven by a distinct pattern of slowing reductions in IHD and stroke mortality and deteriorating mortality from other CVD causes. Obesity and alcohol abuse appear to be interrelated factors.

Educational differences in alcohol-related mortality and their impact on life expectancy and lifespan variation in Spain (2016-2018): a cross-sectional analysis using multiple causes of death

BACKGROUND

Socioeconomic inequalities in alcohol-related mortality in Spain exists, and are postulated to contribute to inequalities in all-cause mortality. We aim to assess absolute and relative educational inequalities in alcohol-related mortality, and to estimate the role of alcohol in educational inequalities in both life expectancy and lifespan variation in Spain.

METHODS

We used multiple cause-of-death (MCOD) mortality data for individuals aged 30 and over for Spain (2016-2018) by educational attainment. We estimated by sex and educational attainment age-standardised alcohol-attributable mortality rates, relative and absolute indices of educational inequalities; and total life expectancy and lifespan variation at age 30 for all-cause mortality and after eliminating alcohol-attributable mortality.

RESULTS

The use of MCOD resulted in an additional 2543 annual alcohol-related deaths (+75% among men and +50% among women) compared with estimates derived from underlying causes of death. In absolute terms, educational inequalities were the highest among men aged 45-84 and among women aged 45-64. In relative terms, higher inequalities raised in working ages, whereas at older ages inequalities tended to be lower, although still important among men. Alcohol contributed to educational inequalities in life expectancy (men: 0.13 years (3.2%); women 0.02 years (0.7%)) and lifespan variation (2.1% and 1.4% for men and women, respectively).

CONCLUSION

Alcohol consumption remains an important lifestyle habit to be tackled in order to reduce socioeconomic inequalities in mortality in Spain, particularly among men.

The combined impact of smoking, obesity and alcohol on life-expectancy trends in Europe

BACKGROUND

Smoking, obesity and alcohol abuse greatly affect mortality and exhibit a distinct time dynamic, with their prevalence and associated mortality rates increasing and (eventually) declining over time. Their combined impact on secular trends in life expectancy is unknown but is relevant for understanding these trends. We therefore estimate the combined impact of smoking, obesity and alcohol on life-expectancy trends in Europe.

METHODS

We used estimated national age-specific smoking-, obesity- and alcohol-attributable mortality fractions for 30 European countries by sex, 1990-2014, which we aggregated multiplicatively to obtain lifestyle-attributable mortality. We estimated potential gains in life expectancy by eliminating lifestyle-attributable mortality and compared past trends in life expectancy at birth (e0) with and without lifestyle-attributable mortality. We examined all countries combined, by region and individually.

RESULTS

Among men, the combined impact of smoking, obesity and alcohol on e0 declined from 6.6 years in 1990 to 5.8 years in 2014, mainly due to declining smoking-attributable mortality. Among women, the combined impact increased from 1.9 to 2.3 years due to mortality increases in all three lifestyle-related factors. The observed increase in e0 over the 1990-2014 period was 5.0 years for men and 4.0 years for women. After excluding lifestyle-attributable mortality, this increase would have been 4.2-4.3 years for both men and women.

CONCLUSION

Without the combined impact of smoking, obesity and alcohol, the increase over time in life expectancy at birth would have been smaller among men but larger among women, resulting in a stable increase in e0, parallel for men and women.

Future Alcohol-Attributable Mortality in France Using a Novel Generalizable Age-Period-Cohort Projection Methodology

AIM

To forecast age- and sex-specific alcohol-attributable mortality in France for the period 2015-2050 using a novel generalizable methodology that includes different scenarios regarding period and cohort change.

METHODS

For the French national population aged 25-90 years (1979-2014), we estimated alcohol-attributable mortality by mortality from the main causes of death wholly attributable to alcohol, plus liver cirrhosis mortality. We modelled sex-specific alcohol-attributable mortality by adjusting for age, period and birth cohort. We forecasted the model parameters to obtain future age- and sex-specific alcohol-attributable mortality up until 2050 using a conventional baseline, scenario I (favourable period change) and scenario II (unfavourable cohort change).

RESULTS

Alcohol-attributable mortality is clearly declining in France, with the decline decelerating from 1992 onwards. In 2014, the age-standardized alcohol-attributable mortality rates, in deaths per 100,000, were 34.7 among men and 9.9 among women. In 2050, the estimated rates are between 10.5 (prediction interval: 7.6-14.4; scenario I) and 17.6 (13.1-23.7; scenario II) among men, and between 1.1 (0.7-1.7; scenario I) and 1.8 (1.2-2.9; scenario II) among women; which implies declines of 58% for men and 84% for women (baseline).

CONCLUSION

Alcohol-attributable mortality in France is expected to further decline in the coming decades, accompanied by age pattern changes. However, France's levels are not expected to reach the current lower levels in Italy and Spain for 15 years or more. Our results point to the value of implementing preventive policy measures that discourage alcohol consumption among people of all ages, but especially among adolescents.

Past and Future Alcohol-Attributable Mortality in Europe

Although alcohol consumption is an important public health issue in Europe, estimates of future alcohol-attributable mortality for European countries are rare, and only apply to the short-term future. We project (age-specific) alcohol-attributable mortality up to 2060 in 26 European countries, after a careful assessment of past trends. For this purpose we used population-level country-, sex-, age- (20-84) and year-specific (1990-2016) alcohol-attributable mortality fractions (AAMF) from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, which we adjusted at older ages. To these data we apply an advanced age-period-cohort projection methodology, that avoids unrealistic future differences and crossovers between sexes and countries. We project that in the future, AAMF levels will decline in all countries, and will converge across countries and sexes. For 2060, projected AAMF are, on average, 5.1% among men and 1.4% among women, whereas in 2016 these levels were 10.1% and 3.3%, respectively. For men, AAMF is projected to be higher in Eastern and South-western Europe than in North-western Europe. All in all, the share of mortality due to alcohol is projected to eventually decline in all 26 European countries. Achieving these projected declines will, however, require strong ongoing public health action, particularly for selected Eastern and North-western European countries.

Exploring the longevity advantage of doctorates in Finland and Sweden: The role of smoking- and alcohol-related causes of death

Aims: Tobacco smoking and alcohol use contribute to differences in life expectancy between individuals with primary, secondary and tertiary education. Less is known about the contribution of these risk factors to differences at higher levels of education. We estimate the contribution of smoking and alcohol use to the life-expectancy differences between the doctorates and the other tertiary-educated groups in Finland and in Sweden. Methods: We used total population data from Finland and Sweden from 2011 to 2015 to calculate period life expectancies at 40 years of age. We present the results by sex and educational attainment, the latter categorised as doctorate or licentiate degrees, or other tertiary. We also present an age and cause of death decomposition to assess the contribution of deaths related to smoking and alcohol. Results: In Finland, deaths related to smoking and alcohol constituted 48.6% of the 2.1-year difference in life expectancy between men with doctorate degrees and the other tertiary-educated men, and 22.9% of the 2.1-year difference between women, respectively. In Sweden, these causes account for 22.2% of the 1.9-year difference among men, and 55.7% of the 1.6-year difference among women, which in the latter case is mainly due to smoking. Conclusions: Individuals with doctorates tend to live longer than other tertiary-educated individuals. This difference can be partly attributed to alcohol consumption and smoking.

Alcohol and educational inequalities: Hazardous drinking prevalence and all-cause mortality by hazardous drinking group in people aged 50 and older in Europe

Background: We examined educational inequalities in hazardous drinking prevalence among individuals aged 50 or more in 14 European countries, and explored educational inequalities in mortality in hazardous drinkers in European regions. Methods: We analyzed data from waves 4, 5 and 6 of the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). We estimated age-standardized hazardous drinking prevalence, and prevalence ratios (PR) of hazardous drinking by country and educational level using Poisson regression models with robust variance. We estimated the relative index of inequality (RII) for all-cause mortality among hazardous drinkers and non-hazardous drinkers using Cox proportional hazards regression models and for each region (North, South, East and West). Results: In men, educational inequalities in hazardous drinking were not observed (PR_medium = 1.09 [95%CI: 0.98-1.21] and PR_high = 0.99 [95%CI: 0.88-1.10], ref. low), while in they were observed in women, having the highest hazardous drinking prevalence in the highest educational levels (PR_medium = 1.28 [95%CI: 1.15-1.42] and PR_high = 1.53 [95%CI: 1.36-1.72]). Overall, the Relative Index of Inequality (RII) in all-cause mortality among hazardous drinkers was 1.12 [95%CI: 1.03-1.22] among men and 1.10 [95%CI: 0.97-1.25] among women. Educational inequalities among hazardous drinkers were observed in Eastern Europe for both men (RII_hazardous = 1.21 [95%CI: 1.01-1.45]) and women (RII_hazardous = 1.46 [95%CI: 1.13-1.87]). Educational inequalities in mortality among non-hazardous drinkers were observed in Southern, Western and Eastern Europe among men, and in Eastern Europe among women. Conclusions: Higher educational attainment is positively associated with hazardous drinking prevalence among women, but not among men in most of the analyzed European countries. Clear educational inequalities in mortality among hazardous drinkers were only observed in Eastern Europe. Further research on the associations between alcohol use and inequalities in all-cause mortality in different regions is needed.

Contribution of smoking and alcohol consumption to income differences in life expectancy: evidence using Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish register data

Background

Despite being comparatively egalitarian welfare states, the Nordic countries have not been successful in reducing health inequalities. Previous studies have suggested that smoking and alcohol contribute to this pattern. Few studies have focused on variations in alcohol-related and smoking-related mortality within the Nordic countries. We assess the contribution of smoking and alcohol to differences in life expectancy between countries and between income quintiles within countries.

Methods

We collected data from registers in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden comprising men and women aged 25–79 years during 1995–2007. Estimations of alcohol-related mortality were based on underlying and contributory causes of death on individual death certificates, and smoking-related mortality was based on an indirect method that used lung cancer mortality as an indicator for the population-level impact of smoking on mortality.

Results

About 40%–70% of the between-country differences in life expectancy in the Nordic countries can be attributed to smoking and alcohol. Alcohol-related and smoking-related mortality also made substantial contributions to income differences in life expectancy within countries. The magnitude of the contributions were about 30% in Norway, Sweden and among Finnish women to around 50% among Finnish men and in Denmark.

Conclusions

Smoking and alcohol consumption make substantial contributions to both between-country differences in mortality among the Nordic countries and within-country differences in mortality by income. The size of these contributions vary by country and sex.