A study led by researchers at the University of
Southern California, reports that postmenopausal women who consume
alcohol frequently double their risks of endometrial cancer. “This is
the first prospective study to report a significant association between
alcohol and endometrial cancer,” says Veronica Wendy Setiawan, assistant
professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.
“Previous studies have shown that alcohol consumption has been
associated with higher levels of estrogens in postmenopausal women,
which could be the mechanism by which daily alcohol intake increases
one’s risk of endometrial cancer.”
According to the National Cancer Institute, endometrial cancer is the
most common cancer of the female reproductive system. It accounts for
approximately six percent of all cancers in women.
“It’s important for women, especially postmenopausal women, to know and
understand the consequences of high alcohol consumption. It does not
affect just the liver, but alcohol has been associated with breast
cancer and now endometrial cancer,” continues Setiawan.
Researchers drew upon data from the Multiethnic Cohort Study (MEC), an
epidemiological study of more than 215,000 people from Los Angeles and
Hawaii created in 1993 by Brian Henderson, M.D., dean of the Keck School of
Medicine of USC, and Laurence Kolonel, M.D., Ph.D. of the University of
Hawaii.
The study followed 41,574 postmenopausal African-American,
Japanese-American, Latina, Native-Hawaiian and White women in Los Angeles
and Hawaii for an average of eight years. Data on alcohol intake and
endometrial cancer risk factors were obtained from a baseline
questionnaire.“This discovery is important as it suggests that changes to
certain lifestyle choices may potentially help alter risk of the disease,“
says Henderson, the paper’s senior author. “However, these findings are
preliminary and must be investigated further before any recommendations
about alcohol consumption can be made.”The study also found that the
association of alcohol intake and endometrial cancer is stronger among lean
women than among overweight or obese postmenopausal women.
“Our data suggest that lean women may be more sensitive to modest elevations
in hormone levels resulting from alcohol drinking than obese women who
already have high levels of estrogen and therefore mask alcohol as an
independent risk factor,” concludes Setiawan. “Again, this is all
preliminary and more studies with sufficient numbers of heavy drinkers are
needed to corroborate our finding.”
Source-Eurekalert LIN /J
