Study links heavy drinking to cancer
POSTED August 4, 2009 - 16:24 | POSTED BY Neharika Sabharwal
Last edited by Sham Kamboj on August 12, 2009 - 12:50
Andrea Benedetti, an assistant professor in the department of epidemiology, biostatistics and occupational health at McGill University in Montreal, said, “The heaviest drinkers had the highest risk, whether you look at the quantity consumed or the duration of drinking. And the risk was really driven by beer and spirits.”
A large cancer study conducted
Examining the relationship between alcohol and thirteen types of cancer the researchers analyzed 3,571 men aged between 35 to 70 years.
Roughly 14 percent were non-drinkers, about half drank weekly and 36 percent consumed alcohol daily.
The participants provided detailed information on their alcohol consumption. Factors like age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, diet and smoking history were also taken into account.
The study looked at cancer risks, the total consumption and number of drinks per day across a lifetime, as well as at specific beverages.
"We looked at the data in two ways," said Benedetti. "We compared people who drank heavily to our reference group, who abstained or drank only very occasionally. We also looked for trends across our categories: non-drinkers, weekly drinkers and daily drinkers.”
Observations by researchers
The researchers found that people who drank daily were nearly three times more likely to get esophageal cancer as opposed to those who drank less than one drink per week.
Moderate drinkers (who consumed between one and six drinks per week) were 67 percent more likely to get stomach cancer.
The risk of colon, stomach and prostate cancer was about 80 percent higher among heavy drinkers, while lung cancer risk rose by almost 60 percent.
Benedetti found the results astounding. "We saw increased risk for esophageal cancer, stomach cancer, colon cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, lung cancer and prostate cancer. The strongest risk was for esophageal and liver cancer."
The researchers concluded, "For the most part we showed that light drinkers were less affected or not affected at all. It is people who drink every day or multiple times a day who are at risk. This adds to the growing body of evidence that heavy drinking is extremely unhealthy in so many ways. Cancer very much included."
The results are published in the new issue of the journal Cancer Detection and Prevention.
