Key points from article :
Moderate alcohol consumption does not offer any significant health benefits in terms of mortality risk.
New large-scale review of existing literature found that moderate drinkers had a similar mortality risk to lifetime abstainers.
Occasional drinkers did not fare significantly better than lifetime abstainers either.
Only moderate to heavy drinkers and heavy drinkers had a significantly higher risk of death than lifetime abstainers.
Former drinkers had 26% more risk of death than lifetime abstainers, suggesting that alcohol-related damage cannot be fully reversed by staying off the bottle.
The association between alcohol and mortality was more pronounced in women.
New Mendelian randomization and interventional studies are needed to confirm the findings.
Study led by Jinhui Zhao from the University of Victoria published in JAMA Network Open.
