Effect of moderate alcohol consumption on cognitive performance among workers: Results of VISAT cohort

Purpose of the study: The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of moderate alcohol consumption on cognitive performance among workers from Southern France. Methods: We included 1251 workers from the VISAT cohort (Aging, Health, Work) followed for 10 years. Data were collected by an occupational physician through standardized questionnaires during the annual visit in 1996, 2001 and 2006. The survey is made up of two self-administration questionnaires containing questions on general, professional and extraprofessional characteristics of subjects, a medical examination and psychometric tests performed by the physician to measure memory and attention abilities of workers. Moderate alcohol consumers were defined as the workers who reported consuming alcohol daily during the three VISAT surveys and no alcohol consumers were defined as the workers who reported non-daily alcohol consumption during the three surveys. We stratified the analysis by gender and described the main characteristics of drinkers. To evaluate variations in cognitive performance scores over 10 years, we conducted an analysis of covariance adjusted for several confounders. Results: 14.9% of workers reported consuming daily alcohol during the three surveys with a majority of men (82.3% versus 17.7% women). The consumers appeared to have poorer cognitive performances than non-consumers, but multivariate analysis shows no statistically significant difference between the scores of daily and non-daily alcohol consumers. Conclusion: One sixth of workers were moderate alcohol consumers over a long period of time. This study underlined that a moderate consumption did not induce changes in cognitive performance among workers in the long term.