Age and Ageing Advance Access originally published online on November 7, 2007
Age and Ageing 2008 37(1):121; doi:10.1093/ageing/afm156
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Reply
SIR—We welcome this response to our article on the associations between moderate drinking in older community living populations and cognitive outcomes [1]. We agree that it is important that this piece of research should be seen in context, and we certainly have no wish to distract from the potentially serious impact of alcohol abuse or addiction on older people.Crome and Crome are correct that our analysis was intended only to refer to older people who can live independently, and that we did not separate the 50–64 age group from the 65+ age group. In fact, we did not find any statistically significant differences in outcomes between these age groups.
The definition of 14 g of alcohol as ‘one drink’ (following the convention in the USA) could be confusing, since in the United Kingdom ‘one unit’ is equivalent to 8 g of alcohol. International differences in alcohol measures means that choosing any particular categorisation is somewhat arbitrary: our choice was intended to allow comparison with US studies, which provide most of the relevant evidence.
We recognise that the CAGE questionnaire is not the optimal tool for identifying problem drinking in older people but it is regarded as useful and was the best tool available in the dataset we used. We agree it is regrettable that the UK Department of Health and the Royal Colleges of Psychiatrists and General Practitioners should choose to issue different guidelines on alcohol consumption.
Excessive alcohol consumption at any age should be discouraged and we would take this opportunity to repeat, as we did in our article, that we do not advocate an increase in drinking in older people. If our findings were to be taken as justification for the denial of effective treatment for older people with serious psychological and physical problems as a result of alcohol use we would be both puzzled and dismayed.
1 Specialty Registrar and Research Fellow in Public Health, Epidemiology & Public Health Group Peninsula Medical School, RD&E Hospital Site, Barrack Road, Exeter EX25DW, UK Tel: +44 (0)1392 406751, Fax: +44 (0)1392 406767
2 Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, Epidemiology & Public Health Group, Peninsula Medical School, RD&E Hospital Site, Barrack Road, Exeter EX25DW, UK
* To whom correspondence should be addressed Email: iain.lang{at}pms.ac.uk
References
- Lang I, Wallace RB, Huppert FA, et al. Moderate alcohol consumption in older adults is associated with better cognition and well-being than abstinence. Age Ageing (2007) 36:256–61.
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