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They tracked 1,750 men who died between 2003 and 2005 in Izhevsk, an industrial city of about 700,000 people in the Ural mountains, and an equal number of men who were still alive.
Writing in the Lancet medical journal, researchers led by London School of Hygiene and Tropical Health epidemiologist David Leon concluded that dangerous drinking caused 43 percent of deaths of men ages 25 to 54 in Izhevsk.The researchers viewed dangerous drinking as heavy consumption of alcoholic beverages such as vodka, beer and others as well as consumption of products containing large concentrations of alcohol like medical tinctures, colognes and cleaning agents.
"Life expectancy in Russian men today is 58 years," Leon said in a telephone interview. "It's lower than the level of men in Bangladesh, a Third World country.
"We would argue that an important dimension of that very low life expectancy undoubtedly is alcohol drinking," Leon added, particularly pointing to the consumption of the non-beverage alcohols.
Men who drank alcohol excessively or who drank non-beverage alcohol were found to be six times more likely to die than men who did not drink at all or did not drink heavily.
If the results for this city can be generalized to the whole country, Leon said, this pattern of excessive drinking may be causing 170,000 deaths a year in Russia.
Leon said the burden of ill health and death associated with alcohol drinking in Russia as measured in this study is considerably larger than previously estimated for a country known for heavy drinking.
Some of the products drunk for their alcohol include things sold at pharmacies ostensibly as medicinal tinctures for high blood pressure or rheumatism or other purposes, Leon said.
"There's no doubt that the manufacturers are well aware that essentially the largest fraction of their market is for drinking," Leon said.
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters)
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