A study conducted by the Bordeaux University Hospital with the WHO and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) shows that alcoholics who stop drinking significantly reduce their risk of alcohol-related cancer.
- Alcoholics who seek treatment and stop drinking have a significantly lower risk of developing alcohol-related cancers.
- Treating alcohol addiction can reduce the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma and cancers of the mouth, pharynx and esophagus.
- To prevent cancer, it would be necessary to strengthen the provision of care for addiction and improve awareness of these disorders.
Reducing or stopping alcohol consumption is linked to a reduction in the risk of all cancers attributable to drinking, including those of the liver and throat. This is what the teams at the Bordeaux University Hospital have assured us, who have just published in the journal The Lancet the first national cohort study in France on the subject.
Quitting alcohol: a drop of almost 40% in certain types of cancer
To assess the link between reduced alcohol consumption and cancer, data on more than 24 million French adults discharged from hospital between 2018 and 2021 were analyzed. The researchers found that approximately 6.3% of men and 1.6% of women were dependent on alcohol. This addiction is strongly associated with alcohol-related cancers in both sexes.
However, this increased risk is not immutable. The team found that people who were in treatment for alcoholism or had a history of abstinence were significantly less likely to develop cancer than those who remained dependent on alcohol.
“Such intervention could prevent a significant number of hepatocellular carcinomas and cancers of the mouth, pharynx, larynx, oesophagus and colorectal cancer. It could also reduce the risk of female breast cancer, although the evidence is less clear.”explains Catherine Hill of Gustave-Roussy in a comment accompanying the article.
Alcoholism: better access to necessary care
For the French researchers who also worked with the WHO and the Canadians from CAMH, their work confirms the effectiveness of therapeutic strategies against alcohol dependence in preventing cancer and should be offered more widely to people with drinking problems.
“We know that treatment for alcohol dependence is effective, but the fact that alcohol dependence is a chronic, relapsing disease often makes us forget that even in cases of relapse, periods of abstinence significantly reduce the risk of cancer and other chronic diseases.”acknowledges Dr. Jürgen Rehm of CAMH.
“From a public health perspective, our research highlights a troubling neglect of alcohol dependence compared to other health issues, both in research and in policy priorities.”adds Dr. Michaël Schwarzinger, lead author of the article and head of the hospital unit for innovation in prevention at the Bordeaux University Hospital. “As a result, alcohol addiction continues to be a silent and terrible epidemic in countries like France, especially since the average annual level of alcohol consumption per capita among adults in this country is more than twice the world average.”
“This study highlights that the health systems response is also crucial to reducing the risk of alcohol-attributable cancers. By increasing the accessibility of alcohol rehabilitation and abstinence interventions in health care settings, countries could do more to protect their populations from preventable cancers. This is why we call for more investment in rehabilitation and treatment services for alcohol use disorders in France and other countries in the WHO European Region.”concludes Dr Carina Ferreira-Borges, specialist in alcohol-related disorders at the WHO Regional Office for Europe.
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