Wine, Beer, Spirits Boost Breast Cancer Risk Equally

Three or more drinks a day raise odds by 30%, study finds.

By Kathleen Doheny
HealthDay Reporter
Thursday, September 27, 2007; 12:00 AM

Copyright © 2007 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

THURSDAY, Sept. 27 (HealthDay News) -- Three or more drinks a day boosts a woman's risk for breast cancer by 30 percent. And it doesn't seem to matter which form of alcohol -- wine, beer, or spirits -- is consumed, researchers report.

"The majority of previous studies have found an association between alcohol and elevated breast cancer risk," said lead researcher Dr. Yan Li, an oncologist at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif.

What hasn't been as clear, she said, is how much alcohol raises the risk and whether one type of alcohol boosts that risk more than another.

Li tackled those questions with Dr. Arthur Klatsky, an investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland and a long-time researcher on the health benefits and risks of alcoholic beverages. Klatsky is due to present the team's findings Sept. 27 at the European Cancer Conference in Barcelona, Spain.

The researchers first evaluated the drinking habits of more than 70,000 women, all members of the Kaiser Permanente HMO. The women had undergone health exams during the years 1978 to 1985. By 2004, more than 2,800 women had experienced a breast cancer diagnosis.

Comparing the women's drinking habits to the incidence of breast cancer, the team found that women who drank between one and two alcoholic drinks a day increased their risk of breast cancer by 10 percent compared to light drinkers -- defined as those who drank less than one drink a day.

That risk rose as drinking rates increased. "The risk of breast cancer increased by 30 percent in women who drank three or more drinks per day" compared to light drinkers, Li said.

"What we are saying is, whatever your baseline risk is of getting breast cancer, by consuming alcohol you have this increment," Li said.

The risk of breast cancer in individual women varies greatly, Li said, depending on their family history and whether they are genetically predisposed due to mutations of the so-called breast cancer genes, BRCA-1 and BRCA-2.

In the general population, the lifetime risk of getting breast cancer is one in eight women, Li said. Based on the study findings, however, "if you drink three or more drinks a day, that risk -- rather than one in eight -- will be one in six," she said.