HHS HealthBeat (July 27, 2010)

Alcohol, drugs, disease and aging

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Aging can come with living with disease and taking medications.  Combining disease and drugs with alcohol can make things worse.  For instance, alcohol can react adversely with certain drugs, or make some diseases more severe.

Andrew Barnes of UCLA calls this at-risk drinking. His study examined data from about 3,300 older patients at clinics in the Santa Barbara, California, area:

"We found that over a third of our sample of older adults who were current drinkers were at risk." (4 seconds)

Barnes and coauthors define at-risk drinking as one to two drinks on most days while having certain other diseases or taking certain medications.

The study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: November 21, 2011