Timothy S. Naimi, an alcohol epidemiologist and professor at Boston University’s Schools of Medicine and Public Health, said the one in 10 figure “is an impressive number and it’s concerning.”

The number is “undoubtedly an underestimate,” he added, because people tend to miscalculate how much they actually drink and heavy drinkers are less likely to be available or to be included in surveys for other reasons.

Dr. Han said he hoped the study would emphasize the importance for clinicians to screen older patients for alcohol use and to educate them about how their bodies become more sensitive to alcohol as they age.

The study did not examine the causes of excessive drinking or whether this number represents an increase or a decrease from previous years. However, Joseph J. Palamar, an associate professor at New York University School of Medicine and an author of the study, pointed to the cohort itself as a factor.

“I believe that this is driven in part by the baby boomers aging,” Dr. Palamar said, about a group that was more likely to experiment with drugs and alcohol than the generation before it.

Dr. George F. Koob, the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, one of the organizations that funded the study, said the findings confirmed trends they have been monitoring.

In 2017, epidemiologists at the institute published a study using data from 2001-2 and 2012-13 that showed that problem drinking was rising among older Americans.