DAILY ALCOHOLIC DRINK FOR AGE 30 AND OLDER MAY EXTEND LONGEVITY

Taking an alcoholic drink a day gives adults older than 30 a slight edge in
longevity compared to nondrinkers, a new study that followed nearly half a
million Americans over a decade concludes.

The study, led by Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society, found
that for people in middle to old age, the benefits of drinking in reducing
incidence of heart disease and stroke modestly outweigh the heightened risk
of death from some cancers, cirrhosis, alcoholism and violent injury
associated with regular drinking.

However, the study also confirmed that as little as one alcoholic drink a
day can raise a woman's risk of fatal breast cancer by 30 percent. Heavier
use four drinks a day or more was associated with three to
seventimes higher rates of cancer of the mouth, esophagus, larynx and liver.

The results are presented today in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Findings were based on a survey of 490,000 adults ranging in age from 30 to
104 launched in 1982 by Cancer Society volunteers. The study also took into
account tobacco use and excluded former drinkers from the comparison group.
Over nine years, 46,000 of the study group died, and the causes of their
deaths was noted.

Thun and his colleagues noted that the study's subjects were overwhelmingly
middle class and excluded a number of high risk groups for whom alcohol is
much less a positive health influence, such as young adults, adolescents,
binge drinkers or very heavy drinkers, poor people and others for whom the
risk of death from accidents, violence, and other external cases exceeded
that from heart disease and stroke.

"In most subgroups, the rates of death from all causes was lowest among
people who reported one drink of alcohol daily," the researchers said.

Because the study excluded people younger than 30, it didn't take into
account the toll from accidents, violence and suicide associated with
increased alcohol consumption, particularly among men 15 to 29. Among men
60 and older, those external causes account for just 3 percent of deaths,
while circulatory conditions account for more than 45 percent.

While "it is not known how long moderate alcohol consumption must continue
for benefit to occur," Thun and his colleagues suggest that "consumption
beginning in middle age might suffice, while averting much of the risk of
accidents and cancer associated with drinking."

Commenting on the study in a journal editorial, Dr. John Potter of the Fred
Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle observed that the study should not make
alcohol "the preventive therapy of choice for middleaged people at higher
risk if heart disease."

Potter pointed out that the study doesn't give the entire picture. "Alcohol
contributes to 100,000 deaths annually in the United States; many of these
deaths (particularly the violent deaths) are not represented," he wrote.

And, as Thun and his colleagues admit in their report, the research did not
consider many of the healthrelated effects of alcohol on the drinkers,
such as mental illness and addiction, the impact on family members, and a
host of other social and economic costs associated with drinking.

"If the U.S. population as a whole drank as this group did, we would see
more of the benefits and less of the harm from alcohol," Potter said. But
in fact, few Americans drink so little so steadily, and almost all could
benefit as much or more from improved diet and more exercise as from
alcohol, he noted.

Copyright 1997 Houston Chronicle News Services