We additionally assessed the overall drinking status (drinkers v non-drinker) of study subjects, the study specific top tertile of alcohol consumption (separately for men and women), and history of binge drinking (for details see supplementary methods 2.1).
Health-behaviour factors included smoking status (current, former, and non-smoker), drinking status (drinker and non-drinker), physical activity ('yes' or 'no'), and sleep (<6, 6 9, and ≥9 h per day) [ 22].
Two-thirds of participants (66.7%) had an AUDIT score of 16 or above, indicating harmful drinking or drinkers at-risk of alcohol dependence.
The good news, for those concerned about the anti-social effects of drinking on drinkers, their friends, families and the NHS, is that the habit continues in a gentle, unstaggering decline.
While there is possibility of underestimating the PAF for alcohol consumption assessed by self-reporting, we believe the underestimation through self-administered questionnaire would not be large, because the Korean society has high tolerance level for heavy alcohol drinking and drinkers are relatively well accepted by Korean social norm [ 57].
Alcohol consumption was classified based on drinking frequency (daily drinkers; occasional drinkers, which include those who drink several times per week or per month; and non- or ex-drinkers).
Model 3 further adjusted for education, smoking (never, former, current), and drinking status (never drinker, former drinker, light current drinker (<4 drinks/week), moderate current drinkers (4 12 drinks/week), heavy drinkers (>12 drinks/week)) [ 22].
A structured questionnaire was administered to obtain demographic and lifestyle characteristics including age, gender, weight (kg), height (m), education level (primary school; secondary school or above), occupation before retirement (professional; others), smoking status (non-smoker; smoker), and alcohol drinking status (non-drinker; drinker).
In the sex-stratified analysis, the average differences in QT interval comparing binge drinking to non-drinkers or drinkers without binge drinking were 2.8 (0.4 to 5.3) and 4.0 ms (1.6 to 6.4), respectively, among men, and 1.1 ms (−2.9 to 5.2) and 1.7 ms (−2.3 to 5.7), respectively, among women (Table S2).
b Adjusted for age (continuous), BMI (continuous), abstinence time (5 categories: 2, 3, 4, 5, and ≥6 days), smoking habit (non-smoker and smoker), drinking habit (non-drinker and drinker).
