By Staff Reports
(Hawaii)– From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
An 18-country study of alcohol use finds the risk for injury is higher for women who drink heavily than for men who do. Researcher Cheryl Cherpitel of the Public Health Institute, a private organization based in Oakland, California, saw this in data on emergency department visits:
“The risk of injury was pretty similar for men and women up to about three drinks prior to injury. After that, the risk for women increased proportionately greater than it did for men.”
And with very heavy drinking – 15 drinks or more – the risk for women was double or greater.
Cherpitel’s study did not include U.S. data, but she says prior research leads her to expect the same relationship here.
The study in the journal Addiction was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
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HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.