The number of women seen at a hospital due to alcohol misuse nearly doubled during the pandemic.
According to a new study published in the journal JAMA Health Forum, complications of alcohol-related disease rose by 33% to 56% among middle-aged women (aged 40 to 64 years) during 10 months between between April 2020 and September 2021 compared with pre-pandemic times.
"We anticipated finding some increase in hospitalizations for alcohol-related complications among women. We didn't realize it would be this stark," lead author Bryant Shuey, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, said in a statement.
Data for the study came from a commercial insurance database and included over 14 million patients aged 15 and older. Researchers looked at monthly rates of alcohol-related complications requiring urgent medical care, including liver diseases such as cirrhosis, alcohol withdrawal and heart disease, among others.
Researchers found that middle-aged women's rate of hospital admissions for alcohol-related complications was higher than expected in 10 of the 18 months following the start of the pandemic, compared to four of the 18 months when looking at all ages and genders. Middle-aged women also experienced higher-than-expected rates of hospital admissions for alcohol-related liver diseases in 16 of the 18 pandemic months.
Among women who were hospitalized, 54% and 66% were because of alcohol-related liver diseases, 29% to 39% were for alcohol withdrawal and alcohol-related mood disorders, 3% to 5% were because of cardiomyopathy, and 1% to 3% were for gastric bleeding.
Previous research has linked the COVID-19 pandemic to increased alcohol consumption, particularly among women, likely due to social isolation and stress. The increase in drinking that women experienced during the pandemic may have tipped new or worsening alcohol-related health problems over the edge, leading to hospitalization, according to the study.
While the authors were not able to determine the exact reasons for these increases, they suggest that difficulty in accessing outpatient health care during the pandemic and relaxed alcohol policies, such as alcohol delivery, could have contributed to the uptick in hospitalizations.
Researchers say the study should raise alarm bells indicating the need for public health and clinical interventions to reverse the trends, including "urgent communication" about the risks of alcohol use, especially among women aged 40 to 64 years.