According to a new pilot study conducted by researchers at The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, five brands of beer, Budweiser, Steel Reserve, Colt 45, Bud Ice and Bud Light, were consumed in the highest quantities by emergency room patients. Three of those brands of beer are considered malt liquors, which have a higher alcohol content than regular beer.

This pilot study, published by the journal Substance Use and Misuse, is the first of its kind to assess alcohol consumption by brand and type from patients reporting to the emergency department with injuries.

“Recent studies reveal that nearly a third of injury visits to Level I trauma centers were alcohol-related and frequently a result of heavy drinking,” said lead study author David Jernigan, PhD, CAMY director. “Understanding the relationship between alcohol brands and their connection to injury may help guide policy makers in considering taxation and physical availability of different types of alcohol given the harms associated with them.”

The study was conducted in an urban medical center at the Johns Hopkins Hospital Emergency Department in East Baltimore on Friday and Saturday nights between April 2010 and June 2011. Of the 105 respondents that admitted to drinking alcohol prior to their injury, 73 were male and 72 were African American, which is reflective of the demographic profile of the neighborhood in which the emergency department is located.

Researchers also tracked consumption of alcohol by type and and compared it to national market share data from Impact Databank, a market research firm that tracks the U.S. market for alcoholic beverages by type and brand. They found that the proportion of distilled spirits consumed by the patient sample was higher than the market share for distilled spirits in the U.S. More specifically, vodka, gin and brandy/cognac were over-represented compared to their market share in the national distilled spirits market. The same was true for ready-to-drink beverages. Women in the patient sample were more likely to report consuming higher quantities of ready to drink beverages.

Although beer was consumed at a lower proportion among the patient sample compared to the proportion of its consumption in the national market share for beer, men in the patient sample were more likely to report consuming higher quantities of beer or malt liquors.

Four malt liquors, Steel Reserve, Colt 45, Bud Ice and King Cobra, accounted for 46 percent of the beer consumed by the sample. Yet these four beverages accounted for only 2.4 percent of beer consumption in the general population.