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We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com. Back to Healio Key takeaways: A study showed alcohol intake raises risks for diseases like cancer and chronic liver disease. A separate analysis tied even moderate drinking to a higher death risk. Two new reports showed that even small amounts of alcohol daily raise the risk for death and a dozen other adverse health outcomes. And while one analysis suggested that lower alcohol intake potentially reduced the risks for diseases like diabetes, the strength of these associations \u2014 which were reversed at higher levels of consumption \u2014 were small.
Data derived from\u00a0Dai X, et al. Nature Health. 2026;doi:10.1038\/s44360-026-00139-5.
The findings expand evidence on the health effects of alcohol consumption, which remains divisive as recent reports from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and an HHS committee clashed on whether low amounts of drinking affect mortality risk. Alcohol raises risks for 10 cancers One of the new studies indicates that the impact of alcohol intake varies for 20 different health outcomes, with consumption raising the risk for many cancers and liver diseases. \u201cThe science on alcohol and health is genuinely complex,\u201d Emmanuela Gakidou, MSc, PhD, senior study author and professor in the department of health metrics sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), said in a press release. \u201cFor cancer, the evidence is consistent and unambiguous: risk rises with any level of alcohol intake. For some cardiometabolic and dementia outcomes, studies suggest small reduced risks at low-to-moderate consumption, but those associations became weaker and reversed at higher levels of drinking. Rather than interpreting these results as an endorsement of drinking, they lay out a complex map of where the evidence is strong, weak or mixed.\u201d In the Nature Health analysis, Gakidou and colleagues conducted 16 systematic reviews using IHME\u2019s Burden of Proof meta-analytic framework, assessing 843 case-control and cohort studies published through 2023. This framework \u201ccarefully accounts for differences across studies and focuses on the most conservative estimate supported by the data. Each alcohol-outcome relationship is then assigned a 0- to 5-star rating to show how strong and consistent the evidence is,\u201d the release said. The researchers reported that alcohol intake was adversely tied to all 10 cancers examined, including cancers of the breast, colorectum, esophagus, larynx, lip and oral cavities, pharynx, liver, stomach, pancreas and prostate, with the risks rising as intake grew. Even one standard drink daily, \u201cor less than 10 grams of pure alcohol,\u201d increased the risks for pharynx, esophagus, breast, colorectum, liver, pancreas and prostate cancers, according to IHME. Average levels of alcohol intake were tied to a 105% increased risk for pharyngeal cancer \u2014 the only health outcome examined which had an increased risk over 85% \u2014 while greater risks for larynx, colorectum, and lip and oral cavity ranged between 22% to 49%. Alcohol intake also raised the risk for cirrhosis and other chronic liver diseases by at least 40%, pancreatitis by at least 22%, lower respiratory infections by at least 2% and atrial fibrillation and flutter by at least 6%. Stomach cancer was the single health outcome \u201cneeding additional evidence to better understand the strength of the relationship,\u201d according to IHME. Gakidou and colleagues also found J- or U-shaped relationships between alcohol intake and type 2 diabetes, ischemic heart disease, ischemic stroke, hemorrhagic stroke and Alzheimer\u2019s disease and other dementias. Specifically, low to moderate alcohol intake lowered the risk for type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer\u2019s and other dementias by 4.5% and 6.4%, respectively, the release said. The researchers wrote that the lower risk for dementia \u201cmay partly reflect shared risk factors with cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes. However, no trial has yet investigated the long-term health impacts of alcohol consumption, and our findings from available observational studies may be biased due to residual confounding.\u201d Lower risks at lower levels of consumption for ischemic heart disease, ischemic stroke, hemorrhagic stroke were inconsistent, though, with the risks for these outcomes increasing at higher levels. \u201cOur framework takes a cautious approach by accounting for differences across studies and reporting the smallest plausible effect supported by the data,\u201d Xiaochen Dai, MSc, PhD, lead study author and research collaborator at IHME, said in the release. \u201cFor some cardiometabolic and dementia outcomes, the relationship is more complex, and the evidence is weaker, which is exactly what our star ratings are designed to make clear.\u201d Even moderate drinking raises death risk The second study found that even moderate amounts of alcohol intake increased the risk for premature death and disability, Katherine M. Keyes, PhD, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, said in a press release. \u201cNo protective effect of drinking was observed even at low levels.\u201d In the analysis, published in Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, Keyes and colleagues assessed national survey and population data from the U.S. Census Bureau, morbidity data from IHME, mortality data from the CDC and 56 systematic reviews to determine the impact of various levels of alcohol consumption on health. The researchers reported that men and women consuming over 6.5 and seven drinks weekly, respectively, had a life-time alcohol-attributable mortality risk of over 1 in 1,000. This risk increased to over 1 in 100 at more than 8.5 drinks consumed weekly for both men and women. Men and women who consumed 14 drinks weekly had mortality risks of 39.34 and 40.53 per 1,000, respectively. Even one drink consumed daily raised the risk for death from liver cirrhosis, esophageal and oral cancers, and injuries, with the risks for these outcomes greater among women vs. men at higher intake levels. \u201cFor example, at 14 drinks per week, the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}