That equates to around one and a half units for women and double that for men.
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“Breast tissue might be more susceptible to alcohol than other organs”.
For alcohol- related cancers, increased frequency of drinking was associated with increased risk in men but not in women, whereas binge drinking was associated with increased risk in women but not in men.
“Our study reinforces the dietary guidelines that it is important not to go beyond one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men”, said lead investigator Yin Cao, a research fellow in the nutrition department at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.
A Department of Health spokesman said: “Whilst we have seen a fall in the number of people drinking heavily on a regular basis, drinking even small amounts of alcohol regularly can increase the risks of some health conditions”. One in two people who smoke will die of a smoking related illness… “Higher consumption increases risk but there is no safe threshold for alcohol and cancer risk”.
“Also, no association was found between light to moderate drinking and the broad category of all cancers, but because different biological pathways determine the effect of different carcinogens, this relation is not particularly informative, since it depends mainly on sample size and composition of cancers in the population under study”.
While some studies indicate that a little drink now and then is perfectly fine (and that a glass of wine every day could even be somewhat healthy) it is not hard to argue that alcohol can wreak havoc on the body.
Today’s study – from the Harvard School of Public Health – found that, overall, women who drank every day had a 4 per cent increased chance of being diagnosed with cancer of any type.
In the American studies, light to moderate drinking was defined as up to 15g alcohol (a small glass of wine) per day for women and up to 30g alcohol (two 355ml bottles of beer) per day for men.
More than 3.5 million or one in five Australians consume more than an average two standard drinks per day, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data shows.
“Genetic predisposition should also be taken into account when discussed individually on the most appropriate levels of drinking”, the authors wrote.
Prof Sir Ian Gilmore, of the Alcohol Health Alliance UK, called for cigarette-style warnings on alcohol so that drinkers could make informed choices. “There isn’t any safe level (of smoking)”, she said.
This large study sheds further light on the relationship between light to moderate drinking and cancer, Jurgen Rehm from Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Canada said in a commentary in the British Medical Journal where the study was published.
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Earlier this year the Cancer Council Victoria found convincing evidence that drinking alcohol increases the risk of cancers of the bowel, breast, mouth, throat, voice box, oesophagus (food pipe) and liver.
