| Drinking and Breast Cancer | |
Women who are frequent drinkers and who have a close relative who has had breast cancer are more than twice as likely to develop breast cancer themselves than those who do not drink.
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Dr. Thomas A. Sellers, professor of epidemiology at the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center in Rochester, Minnesota, the lead author of the study, said the research showed that risk factors for breast cancer may depend upon underlying genetic factors. "How individuals metabolize alcohol may relate to their risk of breast cancer," he told Reuters Health.
Previous studies have indicated that chronic alcohol consumption has been associated with a small -- 10 percent-- increase in a woman's risk of breast cancer, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. According to these studies, the risk appears to increase as the quantity and duration of alcohol consumption increases.
A Family History
But those studies were conducted with patients from the population at large and did not take into account a family history of breast cancer. Other studies have suggested that alcohol may play an indirect role in the development of breast cancer by increasing estrogen levels in premenopausal women, which may promote breast cancer.In the Mayo Clinic study, researchers examined 426 families with a history of breast cancer, including 9,032 women who were either blood relatives of patients or who had married into their families. They questioned the women about how much alcohol they had consumed on average throughout their lifetimes, and about the use of hormone replacement therapy, smoking and exercise. The findings included:
- Of the 9,032 women, 558 had developed breast cancer.
- Women who were first-degree relatives -- mother, sister, daughter -- of the women with breast cancer and were daily drinkers had twice the increased risk of breast cancer compared to those who never drank.
- Women who had married into the family but were not blood relatives had no higher risk of breast cancer if they were daily drinkers than if they never drank.
- Second-degree relatives -- grandparents and aunts for example -- only had a slightly higher risk of developing breast cancer if they drank daily.
The study was funded by the National Cancer Institute and reported in the July 15 issue of the journal Cancer.
