Researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington have published what they describe as the most comprehensive and conservative analysis ever conducted of the relationship between alcohol consumption and human health, and the findings reshape how clinicians, public health officials, and the general public should understand the risk of drinking.
The study, published in Nature Health on June 1, 2026, analyzed 843 cohort and case-control studies published between 1961 and 2023 across 20 major health outcomes. The research team, led by senior author Dr. Christopher J.L. Murray and colleagues Xiangrui Dai, Sneha I. Nicholson, and collaborators at IHME and partner institutions, applied the "Burden of Proof" (BoP) meta-analytic framework — a methodologically conservative approach that calculates the smallest increase in risk that can be reliably inferred from all available evidence. The goal was to provide estimates that could not be disputed as overstated.
