Objective: To estimate the prevalence and pattern of alcohol use and to analyse the socio-demographic and biological correlates of alcohol drinking in Hong Kong Chinese.
Design: A population-based cross-sectional study conducted from December 1994 to October 1996.
Setting and participants: 2900 randomly selected subjects age 25-74 years who participated in the Cardiovascular Risk Factor Prevalence Study in Hong Kong.
Results: Alcohol consumers comprised 55.4% (95% CI: 52.8-58.0) of men and 19.4% (95% CI: 17.4-21.4) of women. The median weekly ethanol consumed by male and female drinkers were 9.6 g and 3.6 g, respectively. Beer was the main source of alcohol; 61.5% of drinkers consumed beer as their main drink. In stepwise multiple regression among drinkers, male sex, smoking, high density lipoprotein cholesterol, primary or below education, diastolic blood pressure and separated or widowed marital status were associated positively with weekly ethanol consumption.
Conclusion: In this representative sample of Hong Kong adults, the majority were either non-drinkers or very light drinkers, which can be used as a benchmark to measure changes in drinking pattern in the future. The putative protective effect of alcohol on heart disease could be due to the higher level of HDL in moderate drinkers.