6 Age Age < 60 (n = 30, 263) Age ≥ 60 (n = 1, 374) BMI BMI < 25 (n = 12, 037) BMI ≥ 25 (n = 19, 600) Health statusb Healthy (n = 15, 989) Unhealthy (n = 15, 648) Fitness level Unﬁt (least ﬁt 20%) (n = 5, 238) Fit (most ﬁt 80%) (n = 26, 399) Nondrinkers (0) 1.00 (referent) 1.00 (referent) 1.00 (referent) 1.00 (referent) 1.00 (referent) 1.00 (referent) 1.00 (referent) 1.00 (referent) Alcohol consumption (drinks/week) Quartile 1 (1–3) Quartile 2 (4–6) Quartile 3 (7–13) 0.59 (0.43–0.83) 1.07 (0.57–2.00) 0.70 (0.52–0.93) 0.82 (0.43–1.57) 0.80 (0.47–1.37) 0.67 (0.47–0.94) 0.84 (0.51–1.39) 0.71 (0.52–0.97) 0.78 (0.58–1.04) 1.06 (0.59–1.91) 0.76 (0.46–1.25) 0.82 (0.60–1.11) 0.61 (0.32–1.16) 0.73 (0.52–1.01) 0.65 (0.39–1.08) 0.72 (0.51–1.04) 0.73 (0.42–1.28) 0.76 (0.56–1.02) 1.06 (0.63–1.79) 0.74 (0.54–0.998) 0.80 (0.52–1.22) 0.69 (0.49–0.96) 0.80 (0.50–1.27) 0.73 (0.53–1.00) Table 5: Hazard ratios of CVD mortality stratiﬁed by risk factorsa, Aerobics Center for Longitudinal Study (ACLS), 1974–2002. a Adjusted for year of examination, smoking (current smoker or not), family history of CVD (yes or no), and each other factor in the table. bDeﬁned as presence or absence of one or more of following diseases: hypertension, diabetes, or hyperlipidemia. Table 6: Hazard ratios of all-cause mortality stratiﬁed by types of alcohol beveragea, Aerobics Center for Longitudinal Study (ACLS), 1974– 2002. Journal of Aging Research Quartile 4 (≥14) 0.85 (0.66–1.11) 1.53 (0.92–2.54) 1.02 (0.66–1.59) 0.91 (0.69–1.19) 1.18 (0.72–1.92) 0.90 (0.69–1.17) 1.00 (0.68–1.44) 0.89 (0.67–1.19) Quartile 4 4349 237 1.15 (0.96, 1.37) 3862 196 0.95 (0.78, 1.14) 3851 423 1.13 (0.97, 1.32) Beer (n = 23, 728) No. No. of Cases Hazard ratios Wine (n = 21, 997) No. No. of Cases Hazard ratios Liquor (n = 20, 416) No. No. of Cases Hazard ratios Nondrinkers 4870 343 1.00 (referent) 4870 343 1.00 (referent) 4870 343 1.00 (referent) Quartile 1 3854 147 0.87 (0.71, 1.06) 4091 177 0.87 (0.72, 1.05) 3111 126 0.93 (0.75, 1.14) Alcohol consumption (drinks/week) Quartile 2 Quartile 3 4876 362 0.99 (0.84, 1.16) 4999 370 0.92 (0.79, 1.08) 5022 383 0.96 (0.82, 1.12) 5779 227 0.90 (0.75, 1.07) 4175 183 0.88 (0.73, 1.07) 3562 247 0.89 (0.75, 1.06) ACLS: Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study. aAdjusted for age (in years), year of examination, BMI (kg/m2), smoking (current smoker or not), family history of CVD (yes or no), maximal treadmill time (min), and remaining type of alcohol. 4.4. Stratiﬁed Analysis. The lower risk for all-cause mortality was attenuated when stratiﬁed by BMI and health status, but remained signiﬁcant in younger men, consistent with stratiﬁed results found by Sun et al. [8]. A meta-analysis by Hvidtfeldt et al. [46] found a reduced risk of coronary heart disease in all ages, and our ﬁndings in the older age group may be due to unequal sample size distributions for each level, reducing power in the sparser strata. The lower risk of CVD mortality in the current study remained in younger, overweight, unhealthy, and ﬁt men. Similarly, the protective eﬀect of alcohol consumption has been shown in populations with poor health status including men with hypertension [37], cardiovascular disease [47], and vascular disease including diabetes mellitus [2]. Interestingly, when the data were analyzed by ﬁtness levels, ﬁt men had lower risks of CVD mortality with larger alcohol consumption than did unﬁt men. This may be due to a synergistic eﬀect as alcohol and ﬁtness aﬀect similar pathways such as lipid, glucose, and cholesterol metabolism. It also may be due to ﬁt nondrinkers having a higher risk due to other latent variables (they may have been high risk and as a result began to exercise and quit drinking). The diﬀerent risks associated with stratiﬁed populations conﬁrm that the relationship between alcohol and mortality is complex and may vary between population subgroups. 4.5. Type of Alcohol. The results of the sensitivity analysis found no signiﬁcant changes in risk of all-cause mortality when alcohol consumption was stratiﬁed by type, consistent with the overall analysis. Although for CVD mortality, our ﬁndings suggest that there was a reduction in risk of about 29% for moderate consumption of beer, wine, and liquor. This reduction was most consistent with liquor