The Association between Alcohol Exposure and Self-Reported Health Status: The Effect of Separating Former and Current Drinkers

Wenbin Liang and Tanya Chikritzhs

PLOS ONE, 2013, vol. 8, issue 2, 1-5

Abstract: Aims: To investigate the direction and degree of potential bias introducedto analyses of drinking and health status which exclude former drinkers from exposure groups. Setting: General population-based study. Participants: 404,462 participants, from 14 waves of the NHIS, who had knownself-reported health status and alcohol consumption status. Measurements: Self-reported health status was used as the indicatorof health. Two approaches were used to classify alcohol consumption: (i)separation of former drinkers and current drinkers, and (ii) combined former and current drinkers. The prevalence of fair/ poor health by alcohol use, gender and age with 95% confidence intervals was estimated. The difference in prevalence of fair/ poor health status for lifetime abstainers, former drinkers, current drinkers and drinkers (former drinkers and current drinkers combined) were compared using Poisson regression with robust estimations of variance. Findings: Excluding former drinkers from drinker groups exaggerates the difference in health status between abstainers and drinkers, especially for males. Conclusions: In cohort study analyses, former drinkers should be assigned to a drinking category based on their previous alcohol consumption patterns and not treated as a discrete exposure group.

Date: 2013
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0055881

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0055881

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