Table 1 lists all conditions 100% attributable to alcohol, or, in other words, disease conditions which could only have occurred as a result of alcohol consumption. Global prevalence data do not exist for most of the wholly attributable conditions and thus these conditions were neither included in the GBD 2000 nor will they be included in the GBD 2005: the exceptions are alcohol use disorders (AUD) and foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS). Although relevant data on the mortality, morbidity and disability of other conditions of Table 1 may exist for specific countries [28], even when the information exists for a country, there are often problems in records of alcohol diagnoses. Specifically, in addition to usual problems with coding smaller categories, disease categories including alcohol in their name are often stigmatized, leading to under-recording and underestimates [29;30]. Because of these problems with data on alcohol conditions wholly attributable to alcohol, we used broader categories (e.g., all liver cirrhosis) in our calculations, and determined AAFs indirectly.
