Binge drinking was defined as excessive alcohol intake over a short period on one occasion each week. No standard definition of excessive intake for use in epidemiological studies exists. In the literature, the threshold used depends on, for example, the population, the country studied, and the time spent drinking alcohol. In the present study, the threshold for “binge drinkers” was set at 50 g of alcohol on at least one day a week, because this level is the minimal quantity most often used to define binge drinking in similar population studies. Binge drinking is not an occasional weekly behaviour because it occurs regularly each week, and this agrees with the methodology adopted in PRIME (alcohol consumption assessed on a typical week over the year before examination).
