Socioeconomic Status in UK Impacts Alcohol-Related Mortality Rates

Can your place in society dictate your likelihood of survival when it comes to alcohol-related diseases? According to a recent Science Daily release, deaths related to alcohol are much higher in deprived areas of England and Wales.

The study was completed by researchers at the University of Sheffield and results suggested that there are substantially more deaths in socioeconomically deprived areas. The mortality rates of men and women in such areas were more than four times that of less deprived areas.

These findings are interesting as a number of earlier studies suggested that there is no more excess alcohol consumption in the more socioeconomically deprived groups than there is in less deprived areas. Overall, the UK is experiencing an increase in the number of deaths from diseases such as alcoholic liver cirrhosis, alcoholic pancreatitis and alcoholic gastritis.

An analysis was conducted on 18,716 deaths in men and 10,123 deaths in women from 1999 to 2003, examining the variation of alcohol-related mortality across areas of socioeconomic deprivation, urban-rural location and age.

Dr. Ravi Maheswaran, from the School of Health and Related Research at the University of Sheffield, and one of the authors on the study, said in Science Daily: "Deaths from alcohol-related causes represent one extreme of the physical harm caused by alcohol. This study highlights the large inequalities in alcohol-related mortality which exist between different socioeconomic areas of the UK. These differences should be taken into account when designing public health policies to reduce alcohol-related harm."

In addition to higher alcohol-related mortality rates in lower socioeconomic areas, the study also found that there was a higher rate in urban areas compared to rural areas. The mortality rate also increased with age, peaking in middle-age adults before declining.