Heavy Drinking Increases Breast Cancer Risk

July 19, 2004

New Danish research provides more evidence that heavy consumption of alcohol increases the risk of breast cancer, especially among premenopausal women, Health Day News reported July 14.

"Our study confirms earlier reports that heavy alcohol consumption is a risk for breast cancer," said Morten Gronbaek, a professor at the Centre for Alcohol Research at the National Institute of Public Health in Denmark. "The second main finding is that there seems to be no difference in the effect of the different types of alcohol, which indicates that it is ethanol itself and not the type of drink that is responsible for breast-cancer development."

The study also said that light or moderate drinking seems to have no effect on a women's risk for breast cancer.

Researchers defined heavy drinking as more than 27 alcoholic drinks a week. The study involved more than 13,000 women between the ages of 20 and 91.

The study's findings are published in the July 2004 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.