Blighty | Health and longevity

A chinking time bomb

Increasing numbers of Brits are dying from liver failure

By A.G. | LONDON

THE British are living ever longer, thanks to medical advances that variously halt or treat disease. However deaths from preventable causes, such as from eating and drinking to excess, have grown just as surely as the nation's waistline has expanded. According to a report published today by the National End of Life Care Intelligence Network, an outfit funded by the Department of Health, the number of people who died from liver disease in England rose by 25% between 2001 and 2009. More than a third of these deaths were caused by alcohol.

Liver disease is most deadly during middle age. One in ten people who die in their 40s do so because of liver problems, the lion's share of which are caused by alcohol. However the average annual number of deaths caused by excessive drinking is highest in people aged between 50 and 59 (see chart). Heavy drinkers who survive into their 80s are relatively rare: 90% of people who die from liver disease are under 70 years old.

Men are twice as likely to perish as women; and, despite drinking less than middle-class professionals, people who live in grimey neighbourhoods are three times more likely to die than those who live in leafy suburbs. This gradient of health has been noted before, not least by Michael Marmot of University College London.

Excess alcohol also leads to obesity that cuts life expectancy, as Sarah Harper of the University of Oxford argued in an excellent lecture delivered in London on March 13th. (The relevant section starts from 26 minutes into the lecture; she addresses the astonishingly rapid spread of obesity in America, and discusses its effect on life expectancy from 31 minutes onwards but do watch the whole thing if you have the time.) She reckons that people will pop pills to avoid deaths caused by unhealthy behaviour. A chinking time bomb may be defused, but it will rattle.

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