PARIS – Even an occasional glass of wine or beer increases the risk ofhealth problems and dying, according to a major study on drinking in 195nations that attributes 2.8 million premature deaths worldwide each year tobooze.

“There is no safe level of alcohol,” said Max Griswold, a researcher at theInstitute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, Washington and leadauthor for a consortium of more than 500 experts.

Despite recent research showing that light-to-moderate drinking reducesheart disease, the new study found that alcohol use is more likely than notto do harm.

“The protective effect of alcohol was offset by the risks,” Griswold toldAFP in summarising the results, published in medical journal The Lancet onFriday.

“Overall, the health risks associated with alcohol rose in line with theamount consumed each day.”

Compared to abstinence, imbibing one “standard drink” — 10 grammes ofalcohol, equivalent to a small beer, glass of wine or shot of spirits –per day, for example, ups the odds of developing at least one of two dozenhealth problems by about half-a-percent, the researchers reported.

Looked at one way, that seems like a small increment: 914 out of 100,000teetotallers will encounter those problems, compared to 918 people whoimbibe seven times per week.

“But at the global level, that additional risk of 0.5 percent among(once-a-day) drinkers corresponds to about 100,000 additional deaths eachyear,” said senior author Emmanuela Gakidou, a professor at the Universityof Washington and a director at the Institute for Health Metrics andEvaluation.

– ‘Less is better, none is best’ –

“Those are excess deaths, in other words, that could be avoided,” she toldAFP.

The risk climbs in a steep “J-curve”, the study found.

An average of two drinks per day, for example, translated into a 7.0percent hike in disease and injury compared to those who opt for abstinence.

With five “units” of alcohol per day, the likelihood of seriousconsequences jumps by 37 percent.

The “less is better, none is best” finding jibes with the World HealthOrganization’s long-standing position, but is at odds with many nationalguidelines, especially in the developed world.

Britain’s health authority, for example, suggests not exceeding 14 drinksper week “to keep health risks from alcohol to a low level”.

“There is always a lag between the publication of new evidence and themodification and adoption of revised guidelines,” said Gakidou, whoadmitted to being an “occasional drinker” herself.

“The evidence shows what the evidence shows, and I — like 2.4 billionother people on the planet that also consume alcohol — need to take itseriously.”

Overall, drinking was the seventh leading risk factor for premature deathand disease in 2016, accounting for just over two percent of deaths inwomen and nearly seven percent in men.

The top six killers are high blood pressure, smoking, low-birth weight andpremature delivery, high blood sugar (diabetes), obesity and pollution.

But in the 15-49 age bracket, alcohol emerged as the most lethal factor,responsible for more than 12 percent of deaths among men, the study found.

– The 95 percent club –

The main causes of alcohol-related deaths in this age group weretuberculosis, road injuries and “self-harm”, mainly suicide.

King’s College London professor Robyn Burton, who did not take part in thestudy, described it as “the most comprehensive estimate of the globalburden of alcohol use to date.”

The examination of impacts drew from more than 600 earlier studies, while acountry-by-country tally of prevalence — the percentage of men and womenwho drink, and how much they consume — drew from another 700.

Both were grounded in new methods that compensated for the shortcomings ofearlier efforts.

Among men, drinking alcohol in 2016 was most widespread in Denmark (97percent), along with Norway, Argentina, Germany, and Poland (94 percent).

In Asia, South Korean men took the lead, with 91 percent hitting the bottleat least once in a while.

Among women, Danes also ranked first (95 percent), followed by Norway (91percent), Germany and Argentina (90 percent), and New Zealand (89 percent).

The biggest drinkers, however, were found elsewhere.

Men in Romania who partake knocked back a top-scoring eight drinks a day onaverage, with Portugal, Luxembourg, Lithuania and Ukraine just behind atseven “units” per day.

Ukranian women who drink were in a league of their own, putting away morethan four glasses or shots every 24 hours, followed by Andorra, Luxembourg,Belarus, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland and Britain, all averaging about threeper day.

The most abstemious nations were those with Muslim-majority populations. -APP/AFP