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Impact of Public Health Policies on Alcohol-Associated Liver Disease in Latin America: An Ecological Multinational Study
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Impact of Public Health Policies on Alcohol-Associated Liver Disease in Latin America: An Ecological Multinational Study

Luis Antonio Diaz, Francisco Idalsoaga, Eduardo Fuentes-Lopez, Andrea Marquez-Lomas, Carolina A. Ramirez, Juan Pablo Roblero, Roberta C. Araujo, Fatima Higuera-de-la-Tijera, Luis Guillermo Toro, Galo Pazmino, …
Hepatology (Baltimore, Md.), v 74(5), pp 2478-2490
01 Nov 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/hep.32016
PMID: 34134172
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel

Abstract

Gastroenterology & Hepatology Life Sciences & Biomedicine Science & Technology
Background and Aims Alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD) is the leading cause of liver-related mortality in Latin America, yet the impact of public health policies (PHP) on liver disease is unknown. We aimed to assess the association between alcohol PHP and deaths due to ALD in Latin American countries. Approach and Results We performed an ecological multinational study including 20 countries in Latin America (628,466,088 inhabitants). We obtained country-level sociodemographic information from the World Bank Open Data source. Alcohol-related PHP data for countries were obtained from the World Health Organization Global Information System of Alcohol and Health. We constructed generalized linear models to assess the association between the number of PHP (in 2010) and health outcomes (in 2016). In Latin America, the prevalence of obesity was 27% and 26.1% among male and female populations, respectively. The estimated alcohol per capita consumption among the population at 15 years old or older was 6.8 L of pure alcohol (5.6 recorded and 1.2 unrecorded). The overall prevalence of alcohol use disorders (AUD) was 4.9%. ALD was the main cause of cirrhosis in 64.7% of male and 40.0% of female populations. A total of 19 (95%) countries have at least one alcohol-related PHP on alcohol. The most frequent PHP were limiting drinking age (95%), tax regulations (90%), drunk-driving policies and countermeasures (90%), and government monitoring systems and community support (90%). A higher number of PHP was associated with a lower ALD mortality (PR, 0.76; 95% CI, 0.61-0.93; P = 0.009), lower AUD prevalence (PR, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.65-0.99; P = 0.045), and lower alcohol-attributable road traffic deaths (PR, 0.81; 95% CI, 0.65-1.00; P = 0.051). Conclusions Our study indicates that in Latin America, countries with higher number of PHP have lower mortality due to ALD, lower prevalence of AUD, and lower alcohol-attributable road traffic mortality.

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59 citations in Web of Science
55 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#3 Good Health and Well-Being

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Gastroenterology & Hepatology
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