Mortality from liver cirrhosis in Italy: proportion associated with consumption of alcohol.

A descriptive analysis of the features of mortality from cirrhosis in Italy suggests that it is made up of two components which are characterized by different age trends. On the basis of this hypothesis, a model has been postulated and applied to the data for the 94 Italian provinces in order to identify the two components. When considering alcoholic drinking data, it appears that only one of these components is associated with the consumption of alcohol, both for men and for women. In this way an estimate can be made of the proportion of mortality in Italy which can be linked to alcohol consumption. For males, this is 40.4% (47.1% for the North, 29.7% for Central Italy, and 33% for the South/Islands). For females, the average is 24.6% (36.6% for the North, 16.2% for Central Italy, and 12.3% for the South/Islands). In absolute terms, these figures represent approx 5000 of the 13,000 deaths per year among males and around 1200 of the 5000 deaths from cirrhosis among females.