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Background: Alcohol consumption accounts for a high burden of disease. The general population of West Pomerania has been characterized as a population at risk with a high prevalence of behavioural risk factors such as alcohol risk drinking. This is reflected by the high proportion of patients being admitted to general hospitals due to alcohol-attributable diseases. The aims of the present dissertation were (a) to analyze dose-response relations between volume of alcohol drinking and the risk of diseases with different alcohol-attributable fractions (AAF) in general hospital inpatients (study 1); (b) to assess motivation to change drinking behaviour and motivation to seek help for alcohol problems during their hospital stay as well as changes in motivation to change drinking behaviour, motivation to seek help and changes in daily alcohol consumption across time according to diseases with different AAFs (study 2); and (c) to investigate the association of fatty liver disease (FLD) with blood pressure and hypertension in a general population sample and to test for the specific contribution of alcohol consumption to this association (study 3). Methods: For studies 1 and 2, data from 'Early Intervention at General Hospitals', a randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of brief intervention for alcohol problem drinking in general hospitals, were used. Study 1 comprised data from 846 inpatients, study 2 comprised data from 294 inpatients aged 18 to 64 years with alcohol problem drinking and alcohol-attributable diseases from four general hospitals in West Pomerania. Hospital diagnoses were classified according to their AAF: (1) diseases wholly attributable to alcohol consumption by definition (AAF=1), (2) diseases partially attributable to alcohol consumption (AAF<1), and (3) diseases with no relation to alcohol consumption or where alcohol consumption has been found to be a protective factor (AAF=0). Study 3 encompassed data from the 'Study of Health in Pomerania', a general population sample of 3191 adults aged 20-79 years. FLD was defined using ultrasound in combination with increased serum alanine aminotransferase levels. Results: Analyses showed that 46.8% of the general hospital inpatients had a disease attributable to alcohol consumption. There was a dose-response relationship between volume of alcohol drinking and the risk of diseases with different AAFs. Inpatients consuming >120 g and inpatients consuming 61-120 g of pure alcohol per day revealed significantly higher odds for diseases with AAF=1 compared to inpatients consuming 31-60 g of pure alcohol per day with odds ratios (OR) of 6.3 (95% CI 3.6-11.3) and 2.9 (95% CI 1.6-5.1), respectively. Regarding diseases with AAF<1, inpatients consuming >120 g of pure alcohol per day had significantly higher odds compared to inpatients consuming 31-60 g of pure alcohol per day (OR 2.0, CI 1.2-3.4). Analyses on motivation to change drinking behaviour and on motivation to seek help at hospitalization revealed that motivation to change drinking behaviour was higher among inpatients with alcohol-attributable diseases than among inpatients without alcohol-attributable diseases (p<.001). Among inpatients with AAF=1, motivation to seek help was higher than among inpatients with AAF<1 and AAF=0 (p<.001). While motivation to change drinking behaviour remained stable within one year after hospitalization in all three AAF groups, motivation to seek help decreased in this time period. The volume of alcohol consumed decreased in all three AAF groups within one year after hospitalization. Data from the general population study revealed that FLD was associated with blood pressure and hypertension at baseline and at five-year examination follow-up. For example, the chance of hypertension at both time points was threefold higher in individuals with FLD (OR 2.8, CI 1.3-6.2; OR 3.1, CI 1.7-5.8, respectively) compared to individuals without FLD. Analyses further revealed that the association of FLD with blood pressure and hypertension was independent of alcohol consumption. Conclusion: The results of the present dissertation provide relevant implications for public health. In view of the high proportion of general hospital inpatients with alcohol-attributable diseases, a screening procedure for problem drinking is needed. Furthermore, appropriate interventions considering the inpatient’s motivational level have to be implemented. The concept of AAFs to classify disease conditions according to their causal relationship with alcohol consumption might be a tool to detect inpatients with problem drinking. The results regarding FLD and its association with blood pressure and hypertension demonstrate that it is important to pay attention to alcohol-attributable diseases in the general population and that alcohol-attributable diseases are associated with subsequent serious sequelae. The results of the present work further indicate that the concept to distinguish between alcoholic and non-alcoholic origin of FLD might be obsolete and should be replaced by a concept that regards FLD as a multifactorial disease condition.