ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION AND HEAVY DRINKING: A SURVEY IN THREE ITALIAN VILLAGES

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Abstract
Aims: We investigated drinking habits, and heavy and problem drinking prevalence in a sample of individuals attending the consulting rooms of local General Practitioners in three Italian villages. Methods: The samples were selected to be representative of the entire population of the three villages. Information on alcohol-drinking patterns was collected using a questionnaire that included a masked form of the CAGE rating scale. According to the frequency of alcohol intake, subjects were grouped in three categories: abstainers, occasional drinkers, and daily drinkers. In agreement with WHO guidelines, 40 g/day for males and 20 g/day for females were taken as cut-off for ‘heavy drinking’ and consumptions of >80 g/day for males and 40 g/day for females were used to define ‘problem drinking’. Results: A total of 2972 individuals were included in the survey (19% of the population). Of these, 44% were abstinent, 20% occasional drinkers, and 36% daily drinkers. Daily drinking was found to be more common in males than in females but heavy drinking was significantly higher in females compared with males (P ≥ 0.0001). The problem drinkers were 12% of the entire population and the CAGE-positive subjects (≥2 positive answers) were 3.5%. Conclusions: Our data indicate that alcohol drinking is widely diffused in the three communities. A large layer of the population drinks above the WHO-established cut-off. The incidence of heavy and problem drinking seems to have significant gender and regional differences that are important to consider when planning effective prevention programmes.