Even moderate alcohol consumption appears to increase a woman’s risk of developing cancer, according to a study published in the Feb. 24 online edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

 

To be more specific, the study found that moderate drinking accounts for 13 percent of breast, liver, rectum and upper respiratory/digestive tract cancers among women. Furthermore, even low alcohol intake can raise a woman’s risk of developing cancer of the liver and rectum. In smokers, cancers of the mouth and throat were also linked to high alcohol consumption.

 

“Even relatively low levels of drinking – on the order of one alcoholic drink per day – increase a woman’s risk of developing cancer. Because a high proportion of women drink low amounts of alcohol regularly and because most of the increased risk is for breast cancer, the risk among women associated with drinking alcohol is of particular importance,” lead author Naomi Allen, from the cancer epidemiology unit at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, said.

 

For the study, Allen and her colleagues analyzed data collected by the Million Women Study, which involved information from 1.28 million women ages 50 to 64. Over more than seven years of follow up, 68,775 women developed cancer.

 

The researchers found that 24 percent of the participants reported no alcohol consumption. However, those reporting alcohol intake, consumed, on average, one drink per day. Very few drank three or more drinks per day. The women who consumed higher quantities of alcohol had even an increased risk for cancers of the mouth and throat, esophagus, larynx, rectum, liver and breast, the researchers found. On the other hand, drinking was associated with decreased risks of certain cancers, including thyroid cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and renal cell carcinoma (the main type of kidney cancer).

 

‘The risk of cancer was similar in women who drank wine exclusively and in women who drank a mixture of alcoholic drinks. This suggests that alcohol, rather than other substances contained in specific alcoholic beverages, is the most important factor in determining cancer risk,” Allen said.

 

Breast cancers were on the top of the list, as the researchers concluded that as many as 11 percent of them can be attributed to alcohol consumption.

 

According to the American Cancer Society, about 250,000 women were diagnosed with invasive and non-invasive breast cancers in the US last year. The latest research suggests that 27,000 of these cancers were alcohol related.

 

Dr. Michael Lauer, director of the Division of Prevention and Population Sciences at the U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, in an accompanying journal editorial, said people should discuss drinking with their physicians. Previous studies have shown that as little as a glass of red wine per day can help prevent heart disease, but “people who are not drinkers should not start drinking to prevent heart disease. We cannot just focus on heart disease,” Dr. Lauer said.