Irish people living in Scotland are more than twice as likely to end up in hospital or die from alcohol-related diseases as white Scottish people, research has found.
The risk for women from a mixed ethnic background is almost 100 times that of white Scots, scientists concluded.
People with Chinese or Pakistani roots had the lowest risks of alcohol- related illness or death.
However, the latter group was in greatest danger of contracting other liver diseases such as viral hepatitis.
Researchers who carried out the large-scale study said ethnic variations in alcohol risk are a “cause for concern” and that lessons need to be learned from communities with low rates of death and illness from alcohol.
The study is believed to be the first to use a reliable measure of ethnicity, taking data from the NHS and the 2001 Census, and using the rate of disease in the White Scottish population — Scotland’s largest ethnic group — as the benchmark.
Source: Ed Carthy, Irish Examiner, 09/05/16
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