Alcohol drinking patterns and habits among a sample of PONS study subjects: preliminary assessment.

INTRODUCTION Alcohol drinking is a major contributing factor to death, disease, injury and social problems such as violence or child neglect and abuse, especially in Eastern Europe. OBJECTIVES To preliminary evaluate the prevalence and social and behavioural patterns of alcohol drinking in a pilot group of the Polish-Norwegian Study (PONS study) subjects. MATERIAL AND METHODS Open-ended prospective cohort study conducted in Świetokrzyskie province. A pilot group of subjects aged 45-64 years has been examined. Data on alcohol drinking were collected for 3,845 respondents with the use of the Health State Questionnaire administered by the CAPI method. RESULTS In males, 72.3% drank alcohol currently, 22.7% were former drinkers, and only 5% never drinkers. Among females, the percentage of current alcohol drinkers was significantly lower than in males, while the percentages of former and never drinkers was higher (50.3%, 35.4% and 14.6%, respectively). 7.4% of males and 0.8% of females drank alcohol daily or almost daily, and weekly alcohol drinking was respectively at level of 32.2% and 15.7%. Males drank mainly vodka (or other spirits) and beer, females grape wine and vodka. CONCLUSIONS PONS study includes interesting dataset for assessing prevalence and patterns of alcohol drinking at population level. Alcohol drinking seems to be common among PONS subjects. Comparison with nation-wide surveys shows on higher number of alcohol abstainers and lower number of binge drinkers among PONS study subjects. On the other hand, frequency and social patterns of alcohol drinking seem to be consistent with data found in national studies.