Journal
PLOS ONE
Volume 8, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0055881
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Funding
- Australian GovernmentDepartment of Health and Ageing under the National Drug Research Institute
- US National Institutes ofHealth [RC1 AA018907-01]
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Aims: To investigate the direction and degree of potential bias introduced to analyses of drinking and health status which exclude former drinkers from exposure groups. Design: Pooled analysis of 14 waves (1997-2010) of the U. S. National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). 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 indicator of 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.
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