A Danish study shows that women who increased their alcohol consumption by two drinks per day over 5 years have a 30% increased risk of developing breast cancer.
With approximately 53,000 new people affected each year, breast cancer is the most common female cancer. Almost one in nine women will be affected in her lifetime, and the risk increases with age. Less than 10% of breast cancers occur before age 40 but the incidence then increases steadily until age 65.
For this reason, postmenopausal women are particularly at risk. A new study published on Thursday may well make them consider this risk differently.
Published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), this work was led by Marie K. Dam of the University of Southern Denmark in Copenhagen. With her team, the researcher looked at data from 22,000 postmenopausal women to see how alcohol consumption could influence their risk of breast cancer and heart disease.
And the data collected is final. Alcohol consumption appears to increase the risk of breast cancer, while the rates of coronary heart disease appear to be lower. Results obtained on so-called “moderate” drinkers, compared to abstainers.
Inverse results on heart disease
In detail, the data shows that women who increased their alcohol consumption (wine, beer, spirits) by two drinks per day (1) over 5 years had an approximately 30% higher risk of breast cancer than others. . But the latter also had a 20% lower risk of coronary heart disease, compared to those who had not changed their alcohol consumption.
In contrast, when these women reduced their alcohol consumption over the five-year period, it did not “significantly” change their risk of either breast cancer or coronary heart disease.
The authors conclude that this observational study appears to support the hypothesis that alcohol carries a higher risk of breast cancer and a lower risk of heart disease.
But on this last point, Professors Key and Reeves remain cautious in their editorial, writing that “the true effect of alcohol on the risk of ischemic heart disease remains unclear.”
“This can be drastically reduced by other lifestyle changes, but also by drugs such as statins which have been shown to be effective in primary prevention,” they conclude.
(1) The participants’ total alcohol consumption was calculated and converted to the number of standard drinks defined as containing 12 g of ethanol.
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