If nothing else, the study provides a clearer look into the relationship between alcohol and cancer, with previous research having mostly studied the association between heavy alcohol use and cancer risk.
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Going for a light drinking tonight? It also factored in new evidence linking alcohol to bowel cancer in men.
Men have to consume more than two alcoholic drinks per day and smoke before their risk of cancer appreciably increases.
They found that for every 1000 women, age 75 or younger, there were 11 extra breast cancer cases for each additional alcoholic beverage per day. “Although most commentators would say that is at the upper limit of safe and there has certainly been controversy over whether there should have been a separation between men and women”, she said. Among men, light to moderate drinking was only linked to increased risk of alcohol-related cancers in those who had a history of smoking.
Data were included for 88,084 women and 47,881 men participating in the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study.
The researchers discovered that the potential link between light drinking and an increase in cancer risk was mostly observed among male participants who have tried smoking at some point in life, as well as in men who had never even been a smoker.
Besides cancer of the breast, cancers that are alcohol related include esophagus, throat, oral, liver and colon cancer.
Light to moderate drinkers had relative risks of total cancer of 1.02 (95% confidence interval 0.98 to 1.06) and 1.04 (1.00 to 1.09; Ptrend=0.12) for alcohol intake of 0.1-4.9 and 5-14.9 g/day among women, respectively.
The finding challenges healthy drinking guidelines set by our National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) that allow two drinks a day.
“Less drinking is better”, said Jurgen Rehm, director of the social and epidemiological research department at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto “Limit your consumption of alcohol”.
“Alcohol can cause cancer, even at levels of light to moderate drinking”.
This study, along with others before it, found that smoking was a significant confounder in the analysis between alcohol consumption and cancer risk.
Prof Frank Murray, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said the Public Health Alcohol Bill, which is now to be published in the autumn, presented the opportunity to include warnings about the risks of consuming alcohol and the number of units of alcohol in drink products.
According to the new study, one glass of drink is defined as 15g of alcohol, which means about 118ml glass of wine or 355ml bottle of beer.
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These same heavy drinkers or abstainers also had considerably lower dietary scores and underwent fewer physical activities than others.
